While I CAN imagine our jobs leaving China, any expectation that they'll return here is strictly wishful thinking. Why should they when employees can still be hired on the cheap in India, Mexico, Vietnam and most of the rest of the undeveloped world?
Made in America: Trend against outsourcing brings jobs back from China
Sat Jan 14, 2012 9:59 AM EST
By Sopan Deb
Rock Center
MSNBC.com
The United States may be on the verge of bringing back manufacturing jobs from China.
Harold Sirkin, along with Michael Zinser and Douglas Hohner (all experts from the Boston Consulting Group – a leading business advising firm), says that outsourcing manufacturing to China is not as cheap as it used to be and that the United States is poised to bring back jobs from China. The three consultants first reached this conclusion in a recently published study titled “Made in America, Again: Why Manufacturing Will Return to the U.S.”
Many companies, especially in the auto and furniture industries, moved plants overseas once China opened its doors to free trade and foreign investment in the last few decades. Labor was cheaper for American companies – less than $1 per hour according to the BCG report. Today, labor costs in China have risen dramatically, and shipping and fuel costs have skyrocketed. As China’s economy has expanded, and China has built new factories all across the country, the demand for workers has risen. As a result, wages are up as new companies compete to hire the best workers.
“The tilt is now getting lower,” Sirkin says. “We think somewhere around 2015 it’ll look flat and may start to tilt in the U.S. favor at that point in time.”
By 2015, it will only be about 10 percent cheaper to manufacture in China.
Full story: http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/14/10156162-made-in-america-trend-against-outsourcing-brings-jobs-back-from-china
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