While the main stream media reverberates with job losses for the American worker, the politicians weigh the political benefits of being “pro business” vs. “pro labor”, there is a building sense of alarm. The “sucking sound” of jobs leaving the US, that Perot talked about in ’92 campaign, while denouncing the NAFTA is apparently being felt outside of the manufacturing sector. High tech jobs, the sacrosanct bastion of a knowledge economy like the US are moving to places like India, Russia and Pakistan. While in absolute numbers terms, the job losses pale in comparison to labor-intensive industries like garment manufacturing—the trends have been alarming.

 HR Lady decided to take a look at the myths surrounding the issues and offer some advice on what may constitute a safe job in future for the American worker. HR Lady decided to focus on a smaller, but popular offshore location, Pakistan for it’s analysis. This is because the Indian job market is heavily skewed by the likes of InfoSys, Satyam, Wipro and Tata—conglomerates that hire tens of thousands of  engineers. India has enough domestic demand to dilute the offshore trend and due to it’s growing costs has become less of a cost cutting center. Similarly Russia, with it’s Soviet Union roots has some incredibly talented scientific computing engineers but does not have the raw man power, or the proficiency in English to affect American jobs. HR Lady found Pakistan to be an offshore pure play, given its English speaking work force and its low cost.

In order to assess the offshore trends for Pakistan, HR Lady looked at the top HR site in Pakistan, Jobs in Pakistan. An internet jobs site, is most skewed towards the knowledge workers, and in a small economy like Pakistan is a proxy for the offshore market.

A quick look at the Rozee site shows that Call Center employment in the US is an endangered species. As the infrastructure and telephony improves, the support, service and even the outbound calls will get generated from Pakistan. You can now expect to get your “no interest credit card offers” and “cheap home loans” from telemarketers with a slight Pakistani twang in their accent. The jobs that American workers love to hate, such as “cold calling” are prized Careers in Pakistan and other offshore locations. The loss of such jobs, may not be such a loss after all.

It is obvious however, that there is a heavy focus on Management and IT jobs on the site. The PHP and ASP.NET developers in the US are likely to get a run for their money from Pakistani developers given the job openings on Rozee. A typical Pakistani job listing (Pakistan Jobs ) shows the trend of using sales in the US, coupled with the raw talent in Pakistan. A fair number of internet marketing and advertising jobs also seem to be moving to Pakistan (Best Jobs in Pakistan ).

Having said that, HR Lady didn’t find any jobs related to Plasma Physics, pushing the envelope on Silicon, bio informatics or Nanotechnology. The US has an undeniable advantage still—with it’s research universities, awesome infrastructure and the reputation as the destination of choice for the brilliant. The US jobs in the cutting edge don’t seem to be threatened by the offshoring trend.

In addition, the jobs that require physical presence in the US don’t seem to be threatened. Health care, in-person services like teaching, real estate, financial services and security are very likely to be growth careers for on-shore jobs.

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