Talent diaspora

India And Silicon Valley: Now The R&D Flows Both Ways

Global markets at work

U.S. Programmers at Overseas Salaries

It’s the great unanswered business-economic question of our day: How do we replace the hundreds of thousands of information-technology, call-center, paralegal, and other jobs rapidly exiting the U.S. for India, Russia, and other low-wage countries? The main answer that the so-called experts put forth, without a lot of conviction, is that we’ll create new “high-value” jobs to replace those leaving the U.S. What are those jobs? No one seems to know.

Korea's part of the pie

Well, Korea isn’t going to let grass grow under it’s feet. They plan to hold 10% of the world biotech market by 2012.

The (Korean) government has finalized its plan to build the country into the world’s seventh largest biotechnology player by 2012. Under the plan, Korean companies seek to capture 10 percent of the global market in the next nine years, up from 1.4 percent last year.

Biotech's future

Well, some people are bullish about biotech’s future. The US Department of Commerce projects that the biotech sector is set to grow. They surveyed industry execs and found optimism. They also found most biotech is small business (<500 employees), 72% of work is for human health products, there are companies in 46 states but 70% are in 10 states, workforce growth 2000-02 was 12% while overall US workforce was flat.

And the US Department of Labor is encouraging community colleges to add biotech courses to turn out people for the industry.

The (Bush) administration has identified biotechnology as a key emerging industry, promising to provide valuable technology and create thousands of high-paying jobs in the coming years, (Secretary) DeRocco said.

Jobs around the US range from $31,000 to $85,000 in the industry depending on a lot of things.

So, I wonder how that’s going to play out in the global marketplace? Will the salaries stand up or have the problems IT jobs have these days? Wait and see, I guess.