The sun is rising in India for America’s outsourced jobs.
But it’s a bad sign for New York’s dwindling middle-class workforce, say labor analysts.
New York’s labor markets are in convulsions as American employers ship more well-paid jobs to lower-cost countries like Mexico, the Philippines, China and India — where IBM, culling 747 jobs from the Empire State, has achieved landmark status. It now employs more workers in India than in the US, according to a leaked IBM document reviewed by The Post. The average IBM pay in India is $17,000, compared with $100,000 for a senior IT specialist in the US.
Big Blue’s eradication of these New York jobs in the Hudson Valley — part of a brutal package of 3,300 IBM cuts in North America — is the latest sign by US employers of growing their bottom line by replacing higher-cost labor with cheaper workers abroad, labor analysts say.
Those fears were raised again this week. Pharmaceutical giant Merck of Whitehouse Station, NJ, announced it would cut its worldwide 81,000 head count by 20 percent, with 16,000 jobs already earmarked.
The US has seen a net loss of 5.7 million manufacturing jobs since 1998, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The gaping trade deficit with China alone “displaced” 2.7 million US workers between 2001 and 2011, the EPI’s Robert Scott says.
New York state lost some 100,000 manufacturing jobs in the last five years. And the recovery of all the local jobs lost during the Great Recession is masked by thousands of new, lower-paid jobs with reduced benefits.
Lee Conrad, national coordinator in New York for a small group of union-affiliated IBM workers, said his group uncovered the latest local IBM cuts. IBM has stopped reporting head count by location in recent years.
The reason? “Frankly,” Conrad told The Post, “IBM doesn’t want the governors of the states that have given them handouts and tax breaks to know IBM has pretty much dismantled their local workforces.” IBM has outsourced jobs not only to India but also to Mexico, the Philippines and other lower-cost locations.
IBM did not address the specifics of its outsourcing policies in the US nor confirm numbers and had no comment on the leaked document when contacted by The Post.
Dr. Ron Hira, who is director of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and studies American outsourcing, dismisses talk of bringing the jobs back to America.
“President Obama has talked a lot about outsourcing but has done literally nothing about it,” he said.