IBM to double their headcount of 10,000 in India.

While the US lost 234,000 IT jobs in 2003, for Indian techies 152,000 new jobs were created.

Paul Craig Roberts with an insightful column that asks "Where did all the jobs go?". Citing 20-40% drops in manufacturing and knowledge jobs, the former Wall Street Journal editor and Reagan staffer points out that the job gains boasted by the Bush economic team are on the lower rungs of the economic pyramid, the same jobs being taken by illegal immigrants. Aim is taken at the economists and so called independent think tank consultants that are belllowing how outsourcing is good for America.

For years as U.S. multinationals moved manufacturing offshore, Americans were told that their future was in "knowledge jobs." Today, knowledge jobs are being moved offshore more rapidly than manufacturing jobs were.

What are the unemployed computer engineers and information technology workers supposed to retrain for? What high value-added job can't be outsourced?

Many young engineering graduates have discovered that they invested in acquiring skills for which there are no jobs and are headed to law schools in an effort to retrieve their future. I know young software engineers who are substitute teachers in middle schools, and others who are trying to organize rock bands to play the club and bar circuits.

They have no idea what to retrain for, and neither do the economists who tell them retraining is the answer.

Senator John Edwards, doing his best to earn my vote, as he speaks out on American jobs and offshore outsourcing.

The outsourcing of service and white-collar jobs, says Robert Borosage, co-director of the pro-labor Campaign for America's Future, "has outraged not only the well-educated middle class but also working-class parents. They were sending their kids to college so they could get good jobs that are now being shipped abroad."

Consider the exit polls in Tuesday's primaries. In Tennessee, 71 percent of the voters said that "U.S. trade with other countries" took more jobs from the state; only 12 percent said trade created more jobs. In Virginia the comparable figures were 55 percent and 19 percent.

The Bush administration, completely out of touch with the plight of the American worker, beliefs this massive migration of manufacturing and white collar jobs is part of a "positive transformation". Yeah, it's had positive impact on the bank accounts of CEOs, corporate lobbyists, and immigration lawyers, but for Joe Worker, the results have been disasterous. Unemployment is still high, many folks have simply tossed in the towel, and consumer debt levels and personal bankruptcy rates are at all-time highs.

Corporatist James Glassman of the American Enterprise Institute tangled with CNN Lou Dobbs in defense of Bush's pro-globalist, anti-American economic philosophy. Dobbs coverage of "Exporting America" on his show compelled Glassman to call him a "table thumping protectionist".
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