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The Pressure
is Still On
By Michael Alan Hamlin
April 23, 2001
I’ve been talking about the
importance of being able to train and retain IT workers in order
to sustain and hopefully accelerate economic growth for quite some
time. It wouldn’t be far off the mark to suggest ¾ or
make the accusation, depending on your perspective ¾ that
I’ve been behaving like a Prophet of Doom, as opposed to my
fellow and significantly more learned columnist Dr. Bernardo Villegas,
who is frequently referred to as the Prophet of Boom.
Like most folks with a stake in the Philippines' future
I've always worried about the quality of education, or rather the
deterioration in quality. But my concern with the nation's capacity
to develop enough of the right kind of workers to fuel its growth
began when I was doing research for the book, Asia's Best: The Myth
& Reality of Asia's Most Successful Companies. As my colleagues
and I looked around the region, it was pretty clear that at some
point growth would be constrained by the lack of trained managers,
professionals, scientists, engineers, IT workers, and skilled labor.
In my view, the sudden growth in the technology sector
in the late 1990s just as suddenly transformed a serious issue into
a critical one. And that was the shortfall in IT workers necessary
to bring Asia into what was then virtually worshipped as The New
Economy. In 2000 the problem was first thought to be downright dire.
That year, the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA)
said that the United States needed 800,000 more IT workers than
it could find, or import. As a result of the U.S. thirst for such
workers, incidentally, it's estimated that India can't fill about
250,000 jobs itself because so many people leave for the U.S.
But 2000 turned into a bust for the technology sector,
and media stories this year frequently shriek about the number of
IT workers laid off, dotpreneurs moving back in with mom and pop,
and imported workers into the U.S. worrying about being forced to
leave after losing the jobs they were so recently and so desperately
recruited to fill. Does that mean the pressure is off, and that
I've been crying wolf all this time for no good reason?
Well, not according to ITAA's latest report. Although
only half as many jobs will be created in the technology sector
this year compared to last year, still about half of the jobs ¾
425,000 ¾ will go unfilled. The reason? A lack of qualified
applicants. "Our 2001 numbers suggest that hiring has by no
means halted for IT workers," ITAA president Harris N. Miller
said in making the announcement. "Rather, demand still far
exceeds supply in this market."
The problem remains the same: training and retaining
the right kind of people; or more precisely, the right kind of IT
people. Mr. Miller said that technical support people continue to
be most in demand, although demand is down significantly in this
category. But where demand is up is such areas as enterprise systems,
network design, and administration.
Not surprisingly, demand is down in "traditional"
areas within the IT sector, reflecting a pull back in capital spending
as the U.S. economy slowed. This is not a good time for people whose
expertise involves technical writing, digital media and database
development and administration to look for jobs. In fact, demand
is expected to be down 25 percent this year. Of course, if last
week's market rally turns out to have signaled a recovery, prospects
are likely to brighten soon. But not soon enough for some. It will
be several months, even if recovery has begun, before companies
start hiring again and much longer, if ever, before they start hiring
as fast as they were in 2000.
What does this mean for countries like the Philippines
and India that provide the U.S. with significant numbers of IT workers?
Principally, workers in the most critical areas are going to be
in just as short supply as they were last year. Many, if not all,
of the most talented professionals in areas such as enterprise systems
which make companies more efficient and productive will choose to
work for many years, and perhaps a lifetime, outside their home
countries.
For large domestic corporations struggling to be world
class, the capacity to find, recruit, and retain such workers will
significantly impact competitiveness. Recruiting IT workers is significantly
more complicated than offering a commensurate salary that on the
surface at least would make living in the Philippines an attractive
proposition financially.
First, working in the U.S. is a learning opportunity,
and further increases the value-added of IT workers, especially
because they are perceived and very often are on the leading edge
of new technology. Learning takes place in different ways: on the
job, through association with other very bright people, and oftentimes
through formal study and research at leading universities. For large
corporations in the Philippines and elsewhere in Asia, the question
is, "How do we match that?" or, "Can we match that?"
Second, a relatively hefty paycheck at home doesn't
necessarily translate into a lifestyle on par with the IT worker's
peers in the U.S. Cheap credit and long payment terms means anyone
with a reasonably good job can purchase a house and buy not just
one but two cars pretty much at the snap of a finger. So here the
question is again, "How can we give these people the lifestyles
they really deserve, or at least can attain elsewhere?"
It's not good enough to simply say, "Well, we
can't." Because that means that the corporation is willing
to live with being less than it could be, and significantly disadvantaged
compared to multinational competitors. While these issues are awesome,
they must be addressed. They're not going to go away, they're just
going to get worse.
(Mr. Hamlin is managing director of the consultancy
TeamAsia and the author of two books on Asian economies and managing
in Asia. His latest book is The New Asian Corporation: Managing
for the Future in Post-Crisis Asia. His e-mail address is mahamlin@teamasia.com.ph.)
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