More stats. http://www.sunspot.net/business/bal-jobs1205,0,943651.story?coll=bal-business-headlines By Leigh Strope The Associated Press Originally published December 5, 2003, 10:33 AM EST WASHINGTON -- The nation's unemployment rate slipped to 5.9 percent in November, the lowest level in eight months, but employers added new jobs at a slower pace than expected. The Labor Department reported Friday that the rate fell from 6 percent in October. The last time it was lower was in March, at 5.8 percent. U.S. companies added 57,000 new jobs in November, boosting payrolls by 328,000 during the past four months following a half-year hiring drought. But analysts had predicted that about 150,000 new jobs would be added in November. The jobs market "is not improving as fast as we thought it was," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard and Poor's DRI. "It's true we've had four consecutive months of payroll growth, which is a start. But it's only a bare start." Economists are looking for monthly payroll gains of 200,000 to 300,000 to significantly lower the unemployment rate and sustain a labor market recovery. The dollar sold off sharply early Friday in New York following the weaker-than-expected report. . . .
Sadly, none of these articles answers the question of how the stat of jobs gained or lost is calculated. Or how it could be "3 million jobs lost and counting" if there have been net job gains the last four months. I mean, to me, it seems like jobs gained should take the number of jobs there are now vs. how many jobs there were at the time you choose as the starting point. And we sure can't get 3 million (or even 2.4 million) lost jobs out of that. We're certainly not adding jobs as quickly as we did in the last administration, but I can't figure out how we get to any net jobs lost since the Bush Presidency started. So, until someone can show me, I guess I'm just going to have to chalk it up to a made-up number.
Sadly, none of these articles answers the question of how the stat of jobs gained or lost is calculated. Or how it could be "3 million jobs lost and counting" if there have been net job gains the last four months. Question for your numbers... I mean, it can't be the number of people employed because the Bureau of Labor Statistics says there are more people employed now than there were in January, 2001, when Bush took office (138,014,000 in October, 2003 vs. 137,846,000 in January, 2000... seasonally adjusted figures). So how does 168,000 more employed people work out to 3,000,000 fewer jobs? Is that really January 2000 or 2001? If it's 2000, that may explain it right there. The economy grew from Jan 2000 to Jan 2001. Perhaps if you did Oct 2003 - Jan 2001, the numbers might come out right? If that really was the 2001 number, then I don't know. The 2.4M seems to be connected to Mar 2001 to today. From one of the articles above: <I>But 2.4 million more jobs would be needed to regain all the ground lost since March 2001, when the last recession began. </I>
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm This shows that in Nov 2002, we had 131,428,000 non-farm jobs; Nov 2003 has 130,174,000 non-farm jobs. That would be a drop of ~1.25 million. Go back to Mar 2001 and you might get the 2.4M number from there.
How about 2.3 million jobs lost? The number are from the wacky left though. Still Waiting for the Trickledown By Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet December 4, 2003 How's the economy doing? This is shaping up to be the number one question affecting President George W. Bush's re-election bid. If you turn on the TV or pick up the newspaper, it looks like the economy is picking up steam, roaring out of a long slump just in time for the election season. But then you turn to your neighbors and friends, and they say it still feels like a recession. Part of this disconnect is because most people get their income from the labor market, not the stock market. The Dow is up 15 percent for the year, but unemployment is unchanged and wages are stagnant. Business reporting puts a lot of emphasis on the stock market, and sometimes even more esoteric indicators such as quarterly GDP growth or the Institute for Supply Management Manufacturing Index. (Both have recently taken big jumps.) But the vast majority of Americans still own little or no stock, even including retirement accounts. So the growth of the economy won't help them until it shows up in rising employment or wages. But the Republicans got a lot of mileage out of that 8.2 percent growth in the third quarter, "the fastest in 19 years." I was a guest recently on a right-wing talk radio show in Boston, and the host kept coming back to that. As far as he was concerned, this was incontestable proof that the sun was shining brightly on the U.S. economy, and the Republican tax cuts had worked. I tried to point out that the economy had suffered a net loss of 2.3 million jobs since January of 2001, but he dismissed this as just liberal gloom-and-doom. But one quarter of fast growth won't reverse this kind of damage, and growth for the fourth quarter (ending this month) will probably be about a third of the last one. Most tellingly, we can see the terrible underperformance of the economy by simply comparing it with previous economic recoveries. It is now a full two years since the recession of 2001 ended. Normally our economy creates millions of jobs when it recovers from a recession. The last recession – the one that cost George W. Bush's father his job – was considered exceptional in that it was followed by a "jobless recovery." But even that "jobless recovery" had produced a net gain of 1.4 million jobs by the time two years had passed. The two previous economic recoveries (1982 and 1975) produced 7.2 million and 4.7 million jobs, respectively, in their first two years. We are now facing the unprecedented phenomenon of a "job loss" recovery: two years into the rebound, a net loss of 768 thousand jobs. The bleeding has stopped in the last three months, with modest job growth. But we need job gains of more than 150,000 each month just to keep the unemployment rate from rising. The tax cut did stimulate the economy – we saw the effect in July and August, which gave us Mr. Bush's big quarter. A much bigger stimulus was provided by mortgage refinancing, which pumped more than $200 billion into the economy over the previous year. This is because households use the refinancing to borrow against their mortgage (adding to their record levels of debt). But both of those sources of stimulus have run their course, and consumption was already flat in September and again in October. And there are serious clouds over the horizon. The biggest is an estimated $3 trillion bubble in housing prices, which when it breaks could have an effect comparable to the collapse of the stock market bubble in 2000. A reminder: It was the bursting of the stock market bubble that caused the 2001 recession and our current "job loss" recovery. Of course, President Bush cannot be blamed for the stock market bubble – it was bi-partisan negligence that allowed it to grow to such outlandish proportions. But he took advantage of the recession that followed to win approval of enormous tax cuts, mostly for the wealthy. These tax cuts have provided minimal stimulus to the economy, while costing trillions in lost future revenue – making it politically more difficult to counteract the economy's weakness. This will prove to be a costly mistake, and the electorate may hold him accountable for it. Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (www.cepr.net), in Washington, D.C.
Simple Questions: When will jobs [non minimum age jobs] show up? Once that happens. . . I will thank Mr Bush kindly Rocket River
WSJ Online... ___________ ...Nonfarm business payrolls grew by a net 57,000 last month, raising the total of job gains since July to 328,000. Economists had expected a heftier payroll gain of 150,000, and for the unemployment rate to hold at 6%, according to a survey by Dow Jones Newswires and CNBC. Over the last three years, employers have cut more than three million private-sector jobs. In order to replace those jobs and sustain the recovery, most economists are looking for monthly payroll gains in the neighborhood of 200,000 to 300,000. Ed McKelvey, an economist with Goldman Sachs & Co. in New York, puts that number at more like 400,000. That far exceeds the average of the late-1990s economic boom. In a speech last month, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Roger Ferguson said, "Even if the growth is sufficient to make meaningful progress in reducing the slack in our nation's labor and capital resources, that pool of underutilized resources is large and it will take some time to be worked off completely." Most forecasters, as a result, don't expect the central bank to begin raising interest rates at least until the middle of 2004. In its report Friday, the Labor Department revised its estimates of job growth for September and October, saying employers added 137,000 jobs in October -- 11,000 more than previously thought. But the job gains in September were smaller than first thought -- an increase of just 99,000 that was smaller than the first estimate by 26,000. ________________ Also, from jobwatch.org we learn that this is the first time since labor statistics were first gathered in 1939 that there has been no positive growth in jobs two years after a recession formally ended (November, 2001). We also learn that even though the Administration predicted that the July 2003 tax cuts would produce 1,530,000 jobs by now, they are still 1,259,000 short. Furthermore, 36 states still have less jobs than they had before the start of the recession. Compare this to 19 during the same timeframe aftre the 1990's recession. And, long-term unemployment is at 23.7% of all unemployed, the highest since 1983 when the unemployment was at 9.4%. Involuntary part-time workers are now at 4.9 million, up 97,000 since last month and totalling 1.6 million since the recession began. Finally, since the end of the recession, sectors shedding jobs paid an average of $16.92 per hour while those sectors hiring pay $14.65 per hour.
We also learn that even though the Administration predicted that the July 2003 tax cuts would produce 1,530,000 jobs by now, they are still 1,259,000 short. Errr, oops.
Nov. Insider Stock Sales Hit 2-Year High Thursday December 4, 12:16 AM EST By Joseph A. Giannone NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock sales by top U.S. corporate executives reached their highest level in more than two years in November, a bearish signal at a time when the stock market has surged amid strong growth in the economy and company earnings. Last month corporate executives cashed in $4.5 billion worth of their own companies' shares, up 43 percent from October and nearly double the five-year monthly average, according to Thomson Financial's Insider Research, which tracks insider transactions. Meanwhile 3,680 executives from 1,592 companies engaged in share sales. Both measures set five-year highs. In recent weeks investors have been barraged by positive economic data and better than expected third-quarter earning reports, sustaining a rally in U.S. stocks. On Wednesday the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average and the broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index reached 18-month highs, while the Nasdaq Composite Index briefly broke the 2,000 barrier for the first time in 22 months before pulling back. Yet heavy insider sales could give investors pause, since top executives and directors are perceived as knowing their company's prospects best and therefore the figures can serve as a gauge of executive confidence. Technology company executives sold $1.3 billion of company stock last month, the sector's highest level of profit-taking activity since early 2001. Finance sector sales reached $802 million, its highest in five years, while healthcare executives disposed of $580 million worth of shares. Insider Research also observed that 56 companies so far in the fourth quarter have exceeded their highest quarterly volumes in at least five years. Among these companies were CBRL Group (CBRL), Genzyme General Corp. (GENZ), Nike Inc. (NKE), Rite Aid Corp. (RAD) and Sears, Roebuck & Co. (S), Insider Research said. Stock-buying activity last month also pointed to a waning of confidence. Insider purchases rose 67 percent to $105 million from October, well below the historical five-year monthly average of $172 million. Moreover $42.98 were sold for $1 of stock purchased last month, the seventh straight month the sell-buy ratio remained in "very bearish" territory -- well above the $20 mark. Still that represents an improvement from October, when the ratio hit $59, its highest level in at least a decade. Among those identified taking advantage of robust prices were executives at Fortune Brands Inc. (FO), which saw its first insider sales since July and whose shares recently reached an all-time high. And six XM Satellite Radio Holdings (XMSR) executives combined for the biggest quarterly sales volume and their first disposals since late 2000. The company's shares surged 10-fold in the past year, Insider Research said. Fourth-quarter activity at credit card issuer Capital One Financial (COF) reached record levels, continuing a trend of increasing sales. Lee Enterprises Inc. (LEE) insiders posted the biggest combined sale as its shares trade at record highs. Meanwhile retailer Saks Inc. (SKS), hovering near a 52-week high, saw its highest sales levels since 1999.
I'm not sure that's such a good signal anymore. The way execs dole out the options to themselves -- with the promise for many more to come -- i expect many just sell whenever they are reasonably 'in the money.' This is likely magnified in the tech sector. Plus many of the 'repriced' options are now worth something. I remember reading a while back how exec's were no longer investing their money in the companies they run. Why would they? They can participate in all the upside though overly generous options.
I thought it was January, 2001, but it's not impossible that I looked at the chart incorrectly. If it was, though, I doubt there were 2.4 million lost since March as that would have to mean that roughly 2.4 million were added in February and March of 2001, which would be way off the charts. Like I noted before, Clinton averaged roughly 200,000 per month. This would be over five times that. Looked it up, though, it was the January, 2001 number rather than 2000. You can play with the tables yourself at: http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab1.htm Here's an interesting coincidence, though. The civilian labor population has grown by almost exactly 3,000,000 since January, 2001. That makes me think that's how they got to that number. Job gains are required to keep pace with the population in Republican administrations (because otherwise there were only roughly three million jobs created during the Clinton years, and that's not what Krugman said). But maybe the number is just coincidental. There may be a formula that I just don't know about. The issue that I have is that the number gets repeated over and over and over again, but nobody ever backs it up. If they could point me to the official study with the official numbers, I'd be willing to accept the number. But the official numbers I find DO NOT support the idea that ANY net job loss. Don't get me wrong, the numbers don't show anything resembling robust job growth that I can see, so I cannot defend the President if we're judging him by that standard. It just appears that the 3 million number is a massive exaggeration (to the tune of just over 3 million).
That makes me think that's how they got to that number. Job gains are required to keep pace with the population in Republican administrations (because otherwise there were only roughly three million jobs created during the Clinton years, and that's not what Krugman said). But maybe the number is just coincidental. There may be a formula that I just don't know about. I think that number has to come from the non-farm total employment statistic from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm That link shows a 1.25 million drop from Nov 2002 to Nov 2003. If it shows a similar drop from March 2001 to Nov 2002, we've got our 2.4 million. It also started growing in August 2003, which is the same as what all these articles say (growing in the last 4 months). I don't know why the numbers from your link don't match up with the ones above, except the non-farm part of it. I don't expect 2.4 million new farmers were employed to balance it out, though.
Woo I found it! http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm <I>This news release presents statistics from two major surveys, the Current Population Survey (household survey) and the Current Employment Statistics survey (establishment survey). The household survey provides the information on the labor force, employment, and unemployment that appears in the A tables, marked HOUSEHOLD DATA. It is a sample survey of about 60,000 households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The establishment survey provides the information on the employment, hours, and earnings of workers on nonfarm payrolls that appears in the B tables, marked ESTABLISHMENT DATA. This information is collected from payroll records by BLS in cooperation with State agencies. The sample includes about 160,000 businesses and government agencies covering approximately 400,000 individual worksites. The active sample includes about one-third of all nonfarm payroll workers. The sample is drawn from a sampling frame of unemployment insurance tax accounts. </I> Your numbers come from Table A, the Current Population Survey. My numbers come from Table B, the Current Employment Statistics survey. You can interpret them how you wish. At this link: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm Your numbers are in Table A-1, mine are in Table B-1.
What? On your link, I see total non-farm employment at 130,409,000 in Nov., 2002 and total non-farm employment at 130,174,000 in Nov., 2003 (seasonally adjusted. Non-seasonally adjusted goes from: Nov 2002: 131,428,000 to Nov 2003: 131,198,000). How does that work out to 1.25 million? It looks like 235,000 to me (seasonally adjusted, or 230,000 non-seasonally adjusted). I can only get 1.25 million if I subtract the seasonally adjusted Nov, 2003 number from the non-seasonally adjusted Nov, 2002 number.
My post makes reference to your first post, by the by. I hadn't had a chance to check out your second link.
I see it now. Total non-farm employment, seasonally adjusted would show a drop of roughly 2.3 million jobs between January, 2001 and November, 2003 (preliminary numbers on the Nov, 2003). So, we've managed to find the number AND prove that the BLS has one confusing set of statistics. I wonder what makes that number the right one and all the other ones not right. Or can I just as accurately claim that the Bush administration has created jobs. Heck, just using the non-seasonally adjusted total non-farm employment shows an increase rather than a decrease in jobs.
Oh, and Major, I appreciate your finding it for me. The more I looked, the crazier it made me because I wondered how the claim could be made if the numbers I kept finding didn't support it. Now I just wonder how the one statistic can be so different than the others. But I won't argue the 2.3 million as a bogus stat anymore.... But I don't know how anyone could argue any of the numbers I posted, either.
On your link, I see total non-farm employment at 130,409,000 in Nov., 2002 and total non-farm employment at 130,174,000 in Nov., 2003 (seasonally adjusted. Non-seasonally adjusted goes from: Nov 2002: 131,428,000 to Nov 2003: 131,198,000). Whoops - I didn't notice that there were two Nov 2002 and Nov 2003's. I just looked at the first and last columns! Oh, and Major, I appreciate your finding it for me. The more I looked, the crazier it made me because I wondered how the claim could be made if the numbers I kept finding didn't support it. No problem, I've been to that site more times than I've wanted in the last couple of days doing research. I've become a master of finding things over there! Whatever you want to prove, you can find some set of numbers there that shows it. Now I just wonder how the one statistic can be so different than the others. The wonderful world of government, I guess. I don't know why one number would be more accurate than another, or which is more credible or anything like that. You would think there would be a nice reliable way of determining how many people are employed (like # of SS/Medicare deposits in a given month since every non self-employed person has to pay that), but apparently not!
http://www.msnbc.com/news/997103.asp A New Kind Of Poverty America is a country that now sits atop the precarious latticework of myth. It is the myth that working people can support their families NEWSWEEK Dec. 1 issue — Winter flits in and out of New York City in the late fall, hitching a ride on the wind that whips the Hudson River. One cold morning not long ago, just as day was breaking, six men began to shift beneath their blankets under a stone arch up a rise from the water. In the shadow of the newest castle-in-the-air skyscraper midwifed by the Baron Trump, they gathered their possessions. An hour later they had vanished, an urban mirage THERE’S A NEW kind of homelessness in the city, and a new kind of hunger, and a new kind of need and humiliation, but it has managed to stay as invisible as those sleepers were by sunup. “What we’re seeing are many more working families on the brink of eviction,” says Mary Brosnahan, who runs the Coalition for the Homeless. “They fall behind on the rent, and that’s it, they’re on the street.” Adds Julia Erickson, the executive director of City Harvest, which distributes food to soup kitchens and food pantries, “Look at the Rescue Mission on Lafayette Street. They used to feed single men, often substance abusers, homeless. Now you go in and there are bike messengers, clerks, deli workers, dishwashers, people who work on cleaning crews. Soup kitchens have been buying booster seats and highchairs. You never used to see young kids at soup kitchens.” America is a country that now sits atop the precarious latticework of myth. It is the myth that work provides rewards, that working people can support their families. It’s a myth that has become so divorced from reality that it might as well begin with the words “Once upon a time.” According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1.6 million New Yorkers, or the equivalent of the population of Philadelphia, suffer from “food insecurity,” which is a fancy way of saying they don’t have enough to eat. Some are the people who come in at night and clean those skyscrapers that glitter along the river. Some pour coffee and take care of the aged parents of the people who live in those buildings. The American Dream for the well-to-do grows from the bowed backs of the working poor, who too often have to choose between groceries and rent. Advertisement A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Anna Quindlen Other books by Anna Quindlen Even if you’ve never been to the Rescue Mission, all the evidence for this is in a damning new book called “The Betrayal of Work” by Beth Shulman, a book that should be required reading for every presidential candidate and member of Congress. According to Shulman, even in the go-go ’90s one out of every four American workers made less than $8.70 an hour, an income equal to the government’s poverty level for a family of four. Many, if not most, of these workers have no health care, sick pay or retirement provisions. We salve our consciences, Shulman writes, by describing these people as “low skilled,” as though they’re not important or intelligent enough to deserve more. But low-skilled workers today are better educated than ever before, and they constitute the linchpin of American industry. When politicians crow that happy days are here again because jobs are on the rise, it’s these jobs they’re really talking about. Five of the 10 occupations expected to grow big in the next decade are in the lowest-paying job groups. And before we sit back and decide that that’s just the way it is, it’s instructive to consider the rest of the world. While the bottom 10 percent of American workers earn just 37 percent of our median wage, according to Shulman, their counterparts in other industrialized countries earn upwards of 60 percent. And those are countries that provide health care and child care, which cuts the economic pinch considerably. In America we console ourselves with the bootstrap myth, that anyone can rise, even those who work two jobs and still have to visit food pantries to feed their families. It is a beloved myth now more than ever, because the working poor have become ever more unsympathetic. Almost 40 years ago, when Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, a family with a car and a Dutch Colonial in the suburbs felt prosperous and, in the face of the president’s call to action, magnanimous. Poverty seemed far away, in the shanties of the South or the worst pockets of urban blight. Today that same family may well feel impoverished, overwhelmed by credit-card debt, a second mortgage and the cost of the stuff that has become the backbone of American life. When the middle class feels poor, the poor have little chance for change, or even recognition. Does anyone think twice about the woman who turns down the spread on the hotel bed? A living wage, affordable health care and housing, the bedrock understanding that it’s morally wrong to prosper through the casual exploitation of those who make your prosperity possible. It’s a tall order, I suppose. The lucky thing for many Americans is that they don’t even have to see or think about it. The office hallways get mopped somehow, the shelves get stocked at the stores. And on Thanksgiving Day, children will be pushed up to the table for a free meal in a church basement or a soup kitchen, with the understanding that that is the point of the holiday—a day of plenty in a life of want.
Anectdotal, but interesting turn nonetheless, instead of shipping jobs to third world country, offer jobs at third world rates to Americans. At that salary they would even qualify for Habitat for Humanity housing if the Boston area is like the Bay Area. http://businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2003/sb2003122_8887.htm By David E. Gumpert U.S. Programmers at Overseas Salaries Rather than send IT work to India, a Boston startup sought locals at the same money. The result: plenty of applicants -- and a lot of questions It's the great unanswered business-economic question of our day: How do we replace the hundreds of thousands of information-technology, call-center, paralegal, and other jobs rapidly exiting the U.S. for India, Russia, and other low-wage countries? The main answer that the so-called experts put forth, without a lot of conviction, is that we'll create new "high-value" jobs to replace those leaving the U.S. What are those jobs? No one seems to know. In the meantime, the matter of overseas subcontracting appears to have become open-and-shut. If you're an executive with half a brain, you can come to only one conclusion when tallying the differences in costs between hiring computer programmers in the U.S., vs. India or Russia. These days, the jobs are going to Indians and Russians. OFFSHORE BARGAINS. But what if there was another way to skin this particular cat. That's what Jon Carson wondered a few months back, when confronted with the need to complete a major programming project in a hurry, and at the lowest possible cost. Jon is a serial entrepreneur whose latest venture, cMarket, helps nonprofit organizations increase their revenues by putting fund-raising auctions online. I have known Jon for years, and -- full disclosure -- have invested in several of his ventures. I only learned about his computer-programming dilemma after the fact, though. cMarket had been pursued, as many business owners are these days, by an intermediary who promised he could cut cMarket's programming costs significantly by outsourcing his needs to India. So last spring, when cMarket signed an agreement with the national Parent Teachers Assn. (PTA) to handle online auctions for its 20,000-plus local chapters and, simultaneously, began taking on charity auctions from Boston to Miami, Jon knew he had to rapidly expand cMarket's capabilities. He had his IT director call the intermediary and tell him that cMarket needed four programmers, pronto. Jon knew the numbers for experienced American programmers doing the specialty work he required: $80,000 a year, with benefits adding an additional $5,000 to $10,000 per programmer. The intermediary came back with the number for the services from India: $40,000 per programmer. It seemed like a cut-and-dried decision, the kind U.S. executives are making every day without hesitating, but for some reason Jon hesitated. Much as he likes the idea of having projects completed at the lowest possible cost, and as responsible as he feels to investors, he didn't like the feeling of becoming someone who callously pushes jobs to other countries. "I'm in the entrepreneurial economy," where competition around both costs and revenues is very intense, he says. "But I was personally very uncomfortable. This situation brought me face-to-face with how easy global disintermediation is being made for folks, to the point where it is almost inevitable." TOUGH CALL. As he thought more about his decision, Jon realized he had a valid business reason to hesitate: As the head of a startup that had been going for less than a year, he wasn't at all certain he should take the risk of having essential work done at a far-off location by people he didn't know, and with whom he could communicate only via e-mail and phone. Still, there was that matter of nearly $200,000 in annual savings. Each time he hesitated about making his decision, various confidantes reminded him about the big money at stake. And then Jon had a brainstorm. What if he offered Americans the jobs at the same rate he would be paying for Indian programmers? It seemed like a long shot. But it also seemed worth the gamble. So Jon placed some ads in The Boston Globe, offering full-time contract programming work for $45,000 annually. (He had decided that it was worth adding a $5,000 premium to what he'd pay the Indian workers in exchange for having the programmers on site.) The result? "We got flooded" with resumes, about 90 in total, many from highly qualified programmers having trouble finding work in the down economy, Jon says. His decision: "For $5,000 it was no contest." Jon went American. And the outcome? "I think I got the best of both worlds. I got local people who came in for 10% more (than Indians). And I found really good ones." HERE AND NOW. In the interim, Jon has promoted two of the programmers to full-time employees, at standard American programming salaries, rather than risk losing them to the marketplace. And he is convinced that having people working onsite gives him control over quality and timing that he wouldn't have enjoyed if he had subcontracted overseas. While cMarket has solved its immediate challenge, the implications of Jon's approach are potentially mind-bending. What if other companies begin taking the same approach -- offering Indian-style wages to American workers? On the positive site, we could begin to solve our job-creation problems. But on the negative side, America's standard of living would inevitably decline. There's only one way to find out for sure how it all might shake out, and that is for other executives to replicate Jon's experiment. The results could be quite interesting.
