> So, when has an industry or business ever sought out "higher-priced labor" > when qualified, competent "lower-priced labor" was available? Or was I > asleep at the time?
How about pretty routinely? Most such decisions were always political and not economical, so it was common practice to pay extremely high prices for contracting, consulting services because they were provided by a vendor, rather than taking advantage of significantly lower priced [and qualified] individuals that could have easily done the work for a fraction of the cost. All one has to do is to consider what companies willingly paid to IBM per hour, versus what an individual would have charged. In short, the problem isn't as simple as portrayed. Companies still pay high prices to qualified individuals, however they are no longer prepared to do it as permanent employees. They recognize that they need expertise, but they don't necessarily need it 365 days of the year. So, we see more qualified individuals being leveraged across multiple organizations, while the day-to-day activities can be handled by "lower-priced labor". This has reduced the number of opportunities, especially for those seeing permanent positions. Adam ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
