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How IT effects North Carolina

Data and high-speed access are still growing at double rates. IT plays a major role in North Carolina's organizational shift from manufacturing to services. It has grown faster than the entire economy, and as a result its share of the economy has increased drastically. Among most industries, IT has increased the growth rates of output and productivity since 1995. By nature, IT both creates and eliminates jobs. There seems to be a trend, though. Relative increases in employment and wages during the 80’s were far greater for those of high skill levels. Aside from the increased demand for skilled labor, other factors other than technological change contribute to loss of jobs in the U.S. Less college-educated people are entering the workforce than previous years, the trend towards globalization – namely, outsourcing low-skilled labor overseas, and the slow unraveling of labor unions. Beyond the fear of automation reducing use of human capability through machinery, the trend of IT calls for a surge of "knowledge workers."

Yet, another hit to the workers in North Carolina comes in the form of taxes. The main debate behind this issue is whether or not taxpayers should have to support companies who receive incentives to transfer jobs overseas. Not only are workers pushed out of their job positions for cheap labor in developing countries, but they are responsible to providing a good amount of the incentive to outsource the very jobs that were taken from them. The question of free trade vs. fair trade arises. Does import competition yield fewer American with jobs in respective industries? It seems that international trade promotes the kinds of jobs and wealth that comes from those, as apposed to the number of jobs. Without a wage-equalizing tariff on goods or services, what will keep businesses from cutting their ties with American-made goods and evacuating the U.S. freely?

Regulatory Uncertainty

The FCC’s set of rules fails to keep up with the ever-changing and rapidly innovative industry. By layering complexities on top of each other, the government is ignoring evidence in the marketplace of how competition occurs in real technology business. When customers, rather than the government are able to dictate investment choices, innovation and competition invariably follow. Since the trend of outsourcing is relatively new in the business era, not many regulatory policies have been established to oversee the global movement of goods and services. In place of them, there is much debate, highlighted in the dichotomy between increasing wealth in the U.S., or increasing jobs in the U.S. The dilemma lies in the willingness to buy the cheapest possible products at the expense of the state’s economy and jobs.

Evolution of IT

Between the years of 1975 and 1994, a new revolution came about – the arrival of the microprocessor penetrated the world of calculators and watches, initially, wiping out well-established companies with only obsolete technologies to offer. The birth of the personal computer changed everything. Personal computers invaded the Server Market. The manufacturing of them became subcontracted to countries like Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, and later, China, which decreased the workforce of established companies in the U.S. Two main facts about this era are of importance. In the computer market, batch applications had given place to online applications using data communications, and making way for the integration of two branches of the IT industry. During this period, software companies such as Microsoft and Oracle soared. The second fact is that this period included a trend for business (small and large) to outsource their IT systems from companies like EDS or IBM. This trend highlighted the usage of large application servers and contributed to the loss of profitability of their manufacturers.

More recently, the global business network has expanded integration of IT applications. The evolution of Internet technology and the increase of portable computing and communications devices have catalyzed trends of "electronic commerce." The growth of e-commerce has changed the focus of improvement by reaching beyond internal operations and communicating with customers and suppliers through new methods of marketing and selling through distribution channels, otherwise known as external operations. Business has exploded as a result of easy access to the customers, suppliers, manufacturers, and shareholders on a world-wide scale.

The newest wave of advancement is the flooding of new public sector outsourcing deals, all in place to make government transactions faster, more efficient, and more electronically-oriented for everyone. Although state and local government outsourcing has yet to develop, global high-speed networks, ever-cheaper computers, the ubiquitous Internet and World Wide Web, and standardization have all made it possible to have operations, both in the private and public sectors, anywhere from Indiana to India. Without the technologies that U.S. workers produced during the 1990’s surge of technological innovation, offshore outsourcing would not be at the level it is today.