| There is a global labor arbitrage going on between developed and devloping countries. I am not only talking about call centers being outsourced by western firms to places like India and back office operations to China. Increasingly "skilled" labor such as R&D and health care, e.g. Indian radiologists are now reading the films of Americans being sent to them electronically, are being outsourced to developing countries at a much cheaper costs.
Do you realized that McDonalds has now found that it's cheaper to have a call center in India or the Bahamas (or anywhere for that matter) take the orders from McDonalds' drive through lanes at their restaurants in the USA -- then zap the food orders back to that same restaurant onto a computer screen for the cooks to fill. The fact of the matter is as people in places like China gets more experienced and skilled, their salary is going to go up whereas salaries in the west are going to come down. Witness the weak growth in US employment and real wage growth in the past 2 years. So 10,000RMB per month may seem ridiculously low to someone in the west, but in the future it may not be an unreasonable salary on an international scale (unless you have highly specialized skills). You can look at it both ways - people in developing countries are underpaid while those in developed countries are overpaid. They are now starting to converge - the rubber meets the road. This may be hard to swallowed for a lot of people, especially those in the west. |
Is 10,000RMB/Month a Ridiculous Offer?