Expert warns Americans against remote work
American employees could find themselves out of job within a decade if remote working continues, said MIT assistant professor Anna Stansbury.
In an interview with Fortune, the assistant professor said that remote work gives companies the power to outsource several positions overseas where fees are cheaper.
“If people that code for Google and Facebook were able to live wherever in the US they wanted and [work] for a year and a half without ever going to the office, it seems very, very likely that a lot of companies will be rethinking this longer-term and outsourcing those kinds of jobs that didn’t used to be outsourced,” explained Stansbury
Richard Baldwin, an economics professor at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, added that remote workers should be very scared “because somebody in India or wherever is willing to do it for much less.”
Many US-based companies have long outsourced their call centers to countries like India, where English-speaking workers are available to provide round-the-clock service.
A recent analysis by the Labor Department found that the highest-paying jobs — such as software engineers and internet publishing — are easier to do remotely, while low-paying work such as retail and food service are harder to do remotely.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also popularized working-from-home (WFH). Consulting firm McKinsey found that 58% of workers are on a WFH setup at least one day per week, while 35% were given the same option five days a week.
