Into Thin Air

That's the challenge faced by both Roxanna Sieber and Doug Hill every day. They come from different backgrounds--Sieber, 58, was an $11-an-hour keyboarder in Villisca, Iowa, for a company that helped make textbooks, while Hill, 60, worked as a contractor in automotive design at Lear Seating in Dearborn, Michigan, and earned six figures. But both saw their jobs move overseas and neither has found permanent work since. Hill works part-time in the veterans' benefits office of American Indian Health and Family Services; Sieber is unemployed.

"I'm done," says Hill. "I know that. Who's going to hire me? I'm 60. I'm just living one day at a time, and I do a lot of praying." Both Hill and Sieber are philosophical about the offshoring trend, saying that's the way the world works, but they worry about the long-term impact on the middle class. "I believe in free enterprise," says Sieber, "but personally, I think that the government makes it too easy to do it."

Sieber's argument is gaining support among some politicians, who are writing legislation that may make offshoring more difficult. One bill that passed the Indiana Senate on February 2 by a vote of 39-10 would require that any state government work be performed in the U.S. The measure was a reaction to a contract--later canceled by the governor--that gave Tata America International Corp., an American subsidiary of the Indian multinational, $15 million for a computer upgrade of the unemployment insurance program, of all things. It's just one of several initiatives addressing offshoring. "It's a national crisis," says the bill's sponsor, Republican state senator Jeff Drozda.

Even some corporate leaders are looking to the government for guidance. "In the absence of a public policy that tells me what to do," former Intel CEO Andrew Grove told an audience last October, "I have no choice as corporate manager, nor do my colleagues . . . [but to make decisions] that very often involve moves of jobs into other countries."

But most companies see such laws as the worst kind of protectionism. Ultimately, these measures will lead to more job loss, not less, critics say. "A lot of times [offshored people] don't think about people that are still left here," says Hansen, WatchMark's CEO. "What about those companies that didn't survive?" In an economy where "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore," in the words of Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, they believe that job security is up to the individual.

Fiorina probably never had the chance to meet Debi Null. A 49-year-old former system administrator at Agilent Technologies who worked for the company and its former parent, Hewlett-Packard, for more than 20 years, Null was laid off in January 2002, then was hired for less money as a contract employee to do the same job. When her contract ended last year, Null got the news that her job was moving to Singapore. Although she says Agilent treated her with respect throughout the process, finding a new position in her field has proven impossible. In order to get by and pay her health insurance, which costs some $650 a month for treatment related to a liver transplant, she sold her two cars, cashed out her 401(k), and took on three jobs. One, at Foley's department store, pays $6.50 an hour; a second, as a real estate saleswoman, depends on commission. She has yet to sell a house.

To qualify for benefits, Null has also taken a job as a $12-an-hour call-center operator at T-Mobile. But with call centers one of the most commonly offshored jobs in the country, it's hardly a secure gig. "I'm part of history, I guess," she says resignedly. "I worked for high tech in the glory days, but I would not encourage my kids to go into [it]," she says. "Right now, my oldest son is a furniture salesman and my younger one is an apprentice plumber. I don't think they can send those things overseas yet."

It's easy to argue that people like Null should have seen it coming and ought to have constantly upgraded their skills. But as offshoring eats away at ever more sophisticated jobs, is it safe to assume that there is a skill level or point in the food chain at which jobs can no longer be outsourced? "No one's immune," says Frances Karamouzis, a research director at Gartner. "We as analysts have had internal discussions, [wondering] are we next?"

Job insecurity, of course, is hardly limited to victims of offshoring. And there is less sympathy for well-educated IT workers, many of whom benefited from a dramatic run-up in salaries during the bubble. "The cost of technology inside the U.S. and the salaries along with it are outrageous," says Michael Mullarkey, CEO of Workstream Inc., a Canadian-based tech company. "I'm paying $65,000 Canadian for developers that were making $147,000 [in California], and they're smiling ear to ear. People are a dime a dozen."