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Deal with it, American workers: In the name of the almighty profit, corporations have begun to ship millions of knowledge jobs to foreign shores, where labor is an irresistible bargain and will remain so for a generation or longer.
And it's not just customer service reps and computer code crunchers who are seeing their occupations commoditized and outsourced to the lowest foreign bidder who can get the job done. Bookkeepers, insurance actuaries, real-estate transaction processors and payroll pundits may see their bargaining power suffer, even if their jobs remain secure.
Workers in the trenches of information systems and information technology may have the most to fear. "If you're in IS or IT and you don't assume you'll be out of work in six months, you're a fool," says Tom Peters, author of Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age.
And even professionals with the deepest training and loftiest skills may see some of their work go abroad. For example, some hospitals are using radiologists in India to read medical images during the night shift in the United States.
This can compromise medical care, says Mark Bakken, chief operating officer of Radlinx Group Ltd., an Irving, Texas, teleradiology provider that uses only physicians based in the United States. But unless the practice is regulated out of existence, offshore radiology will continue, limiting increases to US radiologists' six-figure compensation.
The nascent offshoring phenomenon is the culmination of a long-term trend toward labor globalization.
"Locating jobs around the world is part of our bigger goal to serve customers well and to do so competitively" in terms of costs, says Susan Korchak, a spokeswoman for American Express Co., the New York City-based travel and financial services firm.
What can Americans in vulnerable industries and occupations do to keep their jobs from being swept away by the rearing tsunami of offshoring? The choices are simple: Leap to the high ground of a new career or learn to surf the great wave.
Strategy 1: Sprint to High Ground
"The incidence of people making big jumps in the labor market is rising," says Matthew Slaughter, an associate professor of business administration at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Workers should consider making radical changes as soon as they can see that an entire class of jobs is setting sail for foreign shores. So a computer programmer who can't imagine himself rising several levels to an offshore-resistant position like systems architect may jump to a technical marketing position that requires face-to-face contact with customers and a deep knowledge of American corporate culture.
"Skills that are commoditized go offshore," says Amit Maheshwari, CEO of i-Vantage Inc., an offshore outsourcing consultancy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It really depends on company culture how high in the hierarchy the jobs go offshore."
Some employers that recognize the long-term value of their top employees are trying to help them transition out of vulnerable positions. "Large companies are coming up with tools for retraining people" when their jobs are sent offshore, says John McCarthy, group director at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
What about workers whose employers are not so forward thinking? They've got to take it on themselves to keep ahead of their foreign cohorts by keeping their technical and business skills updated.
Strategy 2: Learn to Surf Offshore
If you can't beat the offshoring trend, join it. That's the advice of experts who see excellent career opportunities in the work of transitioning to and managing offshore operations.
"Problem-solving skills are the glue that holds these operations together across borders," says Slaughter. Select professionals will be able to continue in their current line of work and even prosper by volunteering for the many difficult challenges of structuring and implementing offshore deals.
And professionals who can analyze where to draw the line -- which jobs to offshore and which to keep stateside -- should find these skills in great demand in the 2000s. Because even with potentially enormous savings in labor costs, offshoring isn't a no-brainer. For example, look at Dell Computer's recent decision to stop routing its corporate customers' tech support calls to phone agents in Asia.
Remember: Half of learning how to surf is knowing when to bail out.
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