MOUNTAIN LAKES, NJ - Sept. 5, 2003 (Send2Press Newswire) -- The economy picks up and employment stays down. What's up? On the heels of soaring productivity, "The American middle class is being sold out in a decades-long process," says Richard W. Samson, author of a report from think tank EraNova Institute (www.eranova.com). First America's farmers got the axe. Then blue-collar workers found themselves on the streets. Now white-collar employees are getting the heave-ho. Though perfectly legal, the process is displacing far more wealth than Worldcom or Enron.

The report shows why jobs are being cut even as business recovers. "The real problem isn't vague economic forces or cheap foreign labor," says Samson. "It's invisible chips and code." The report documents how today's technology lets executives create more wealth with fewer and fewer people, all below the radar of public awareness.

The report, Surviving the Great Global Brain Drain (9/5/03 update), documents a two-stage "mind-into-technology" trend that threatens to swell the ranks of the unemployed and working poor. "Unless we change course," says Samson, "We could end up like Guatemala, with a filthy-rich elite on top, peons below, and not much in between." America already has the highest poverty rate of 13 leading nations -- roughly twice that of Canada, France, or Japan -- according to the Organization for Economic Cooperaton and Development (OECD).

In the first stage of the trend, American jobs are going to low-wage countries. As manufacturing bleeds, white-collar work follows suit. According to Forrester Research, by 2015, U.S. firms will transfer 3.3 million high-tech and service jobs to India and elsewhere. Even welfare claims processing has been off-shored -- a practice halted for New Jersey claims (but not other states') thanks to state senator Shirley Turner.

"The Stage One shift is well-known," says Samson, "Stage Two is the problem." That's the replacement of low-cost labor by lower-cost all-electronic systems such as voice recognition, robotics, or inter-company automation. "Not even an Indian can work as cheaply as a chip."

The EraNova report -- available at http://www.eranova.com/braindrain.pdf -- offers corporate, governmental, and individual strategies for preserving America's middle class and sharing the benefits of information-age productivity.

EraNova Institute, 142 Morris Avenue, Mountain Lakes, NJ 07046.

Company Website: www.eranova.com
Source of News: EraNova Institute

New Jersey Business News / Career and Employment Newswire
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