Andrew often comments on my posts and always has something interesting to say. –

In a lot of cases, the jobs that are going overseas are NOT in job fields that have a shortage of workers. You mentioned manufacturing. Thats the big one.

This is speculation, but I think that outsourcing jobs has actually created a lot of the worker shortages in particular job markets.

My generation, while growing up, was constantly bombarded with this idea that if you did not go to college, then you wont be successful. I think this mentality was partly due to our parents generation seeing those high school level jobs (manufacturing, customer service, technical support, etc) being sent overseas and they wanted to steer their children away from having to look for those types of jobs. An unfortunate biproduct of that panic is that, with everyone going to college, the value of the college degree has fallen. Another consequence is that people, generally, arent interested in going into a skilled labor field (carpenter, welder, electrician, etc.) because they’ve been told over and over again that you need college to be successful. This is CREATING that shortage that proponents of offshoring cite to justify their actions.