Labor Utopia In Florida

With all the talk over the grievous consequences of the most recent economic recession in America, there comes this bit of news that somehow becomes uplifting especially to those who had became so very pessimistic about global economic outcomes.

A Florida-based telecommunication company, SYKES Enterprises, one that specializes in call center operations, had to recently close down since it could not find enough manpower to hire. Talk about the irony of it all. In Florida, nobody wants the call center job that somehow, it becomes a labor utopia in some sense. Probably, it still becomes more rational and tenable to locate their call centers in Asia, especially in the Philippines where English is close to a mother-language.

With unemployment rate in America at 8.1%, the highest in 25 years, this unique situation in Florida remains more or less a pleasant aberration in the labor situation there, as more than half-a-million jobs were lost in February alone. And these are alarming numbers and it would not be far-off to anticipate that America wants all its jobs back, the ones that was lost to China and other Asian location as a result of cost-saving measures for many huge American companies.

And one might wonder how’d they’d be able to do that. Yet, it seems to me that they have to do that at any cost or the U.S. economy wouldn’t rebound fully. Maybe American workers would slowly agree and adjust to lower compensation standards in order to compete with the labor market in Asia and elsewhere. Otherwise, such thrust would be just wishful thinking.