MOUNTAIN LAKES, NJ - Sept. 22, 2003 (Send2Press Newswire) -- Like pre-Revolutionary France, America is being squeezed, possibly to a flash point. "Back then the trigger word was bread, now it's jobs, but the issue is the same," says Richard W. Samson, author of a report from think tank EraNova Institute (www.eranova.com). "A revolution - let's be sure it's peaceful -- may be on the horizon."

The report, "Surviving the Great Global Brain Drain," deals with the dilemma of layoffs even as business improves, and offers a roadmap to new and better jobs. It singles out information technology (IT) as a key cause of the jobless recovery and, ironically, as its most prominent victim. The report cites the IT mechanisms that let companies send jobs offshore and eliminate tasks entirely: corporate computing, cheap global telephony, and advances such as Web Services. "CEOs are just trying to stay competitive," says Samson. "They don't see the consequences." Many economists warn that Americaâs growing wealth gap invites social instability.

"IT job casualties are a bellwether, leading the way to white-collar carnage," says Samson. A Gartner Inc. study shows that 10% of software-development and IT service-provider jobs will be moved offshore by the end of 2004. Following suit, banks, brokerages, and insurance companies plan to move more than 500,000 jobs overseas within five years, according to AT Kearney.

The EraNova report documents a shift of know-how work into electronics, paralleling an earlier shift of muscle work into machinery. This lets white-collar jobs, like blue-collar ones, be transferred to low-wage foreign workers or to fully automated systems.

Available at http://www.eranova.com/braindrain.pdf, the report offers a fix: recasting work to leverage "hyper-human" skills not easily transferred via, or into, electronics. "CEOs had better lead the revolution by creating new and better jobs," says Samson. "Otherwise they'll be assaulted by legislation, union resurgence, and activism of all sorts."

"The future will belong to companies that -- recent aberrations aside -- have traditionally placed a high value on their people," he says, "like GE, 3M, IBM, Disney, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg, Xerox, Intel, Readers' Digest, FedEx, Microsoft, and WL Gore."

EraNova Institute, 142 Morris Avenue - Mountain Lakes, NJ 07046 - 973-335-3699

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

New Jersey Business Newswire / Career and IT Employment Newswire
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