Outsourcing Hi-Tech Jobs to Rural America

In the last decade, an increasing number of American companies have been radically cutting costs by sending manufacturing and customer service jobs overseas, where labor costs can be dramatically lower. Some of those jobs were the mainstay of rural U.S. communities, where low rent and wages first attracted outsourcing work away from higher-priced cities.

Now there’s an attempt to bring outsourcing jobs back to smaller cities and towns. NPR’s Howard Berkes recently visited the Arkansas town of Magnolia — home to about 10,000 people, near the southwest corner of the state — where some say there aren’t enough jobs in local timber, oil, farming and manufacturing industries to keep local kids at home.

"In a global marketplace, those commodities operate with ever thinner margins," says Mark Drabenstott of the Center for the Study of Rural America. "So the real challenge for most rural areas is (getting) from a commodity economy to a knowledge-driven economy."

(Thanks to John Masterson of Modwest for passing this along.- Russ)

by Howard Berkes

Full Story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4496502