U.S. Workers in a Global Job Market: Government Needs to Collect and Analyze Data on the Offshoring of Science and Technology Jobs So That It Can Take Action to Nurture and Encourage Highly Skilled U.S. Workers (Industry Overview‪)‬

Among the many changes that are part of the emergence of a global economy is a radically different relationship between U.S. high-tech companies and their employees. As late as the 1990s, a degree in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) was a virtual guarantee of employment. Today, many good STEM jobs are moving to other countries, reducing prospects for current STEM workers and dimming the appeal of STEM studies for young people. U.S. policymakers need to learn more about these developments so that they can make the critical choices about how to nurture a key ingredient in the nation's future economic health, the STEM workforce. U.S. corporate leaders are not hiding the fact that globalization has fundamentally changed how they manage their human resources. Craig Barrett, then the chief executive officer (CEO) of Intel Corporation, said that his company can succeed without ever hiring another American. In an article in Foreign Affairs magazine, IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano gave the eulogy for the multinational corporation (MNC), introducing us to the globally integrated enterprise (GIE): "Many parties to the globalization debate mistakenly project into the future a picture of corporations that is unchanged from that of today or yesterday. ... But businesses are changing in fundamental ways--structurally, operationally, culturally--in response to the imperatives of globalization and new technology."