Personal Finance Portfolio: Part 5

Personal Finance Portfolio: Part 5

Note: This is one part of a Personal Finance Portfolio in the course that we will be working on throughout the semester. The completed portfolio will count 10% of your final grade. 

Goal

This Personal Finance Activity will help you understand globalization's impact on the U.S. job market. It will help you see which jobs are being “outsourced,” or transferred from the United States where salaries are relatively high to developing countries where salaries are far lower. Many outsourced jobs are low-skilled and pay pennies an hour. Increasingly, however, communications technologies and other advances are moving more high-skilled jobs from the United States to developing nations that have a pool of well-trained workers who will work for far less money than Americans doing the same job. This information may be of assistance to you in your choice of a career that, hopefully, will not be outsourced.

Instructions

Analyze the tables below to determine which jobs are most vulnerable to outsourcing from the United States to developing nations. Notice, too, the salary differential paid for the same work in the United States and overseas. Answer the questions that follow. You may use a calculator if needed. Use the information here to answer the following questions.

Projected Number of U.S. Jobs to Move Overseas
Industry	Jobs
Management: Number of jobs moving overseas by 2015:	288,281
Business: Number of jobs moving overseas by 2015:	348,028
Computing: Number of jobs moving overseas by 2015:	472,632
Architecture: Number of jobs moving overseas by 2015:	184,347
Life sciences: Number of jobs moving overseas by 2015:	36,770
Legal: Number of jobs moving overseas by 2015:	76,642
Art, design: Number of jobs moving overseas by 2015:	29,564
Sales: Number of jobs moving overseas by 2015:	226,564
Office: Number of jobs moving overseas by 2015:	1,659,310

Salary Comparisons
Position and Country	Salary
Software Programmer: United States	$66,100
Software Programmer: India	$10,000
Mechanical Engineer: United States	$55,600
Mechanical Engineer: India	$5,900
IT Manager: United States	$55,000
IT Manager: India	$8,500
Accountant: United States	$41,000
Accountant: India	$5,000
Financial Operations: United States	$37,625
Financial Operations: India	$5,500

Questions

1. Many of these outsourced jobs are with multinational corporations based in the United States. In what ways do you think these overseas employees communicate and deliver their work to U.S. corporate offices? 

2. What are some occupations you might consider as a future career that are not likely to be outsourced to workers overseas? What criteria would you use to determine a “safe” career that is kept in the United States? 

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