Profession 'will be outsourced' in 30 years
Pinceton professor says UK accountants and other major professions could find themselves outsourced over the next generation
Accountants in the UK could all be out of a job within the next generation,
according to a Princeton professor.
The dynamics of globalisation will mean that many jobs currently regarded as
highly skilled will in time be done more cheaply when outsourced, leaving many
traditional professions – lawyers, accountants and journalists – out of work
well before their careers end, according to
Professor Alan Blinder, a
well-respected US economics professor.
In an interview with the
Daily
Telegraph, Professor Blinder said: ‘Lawyers involved in family disputes, and
criminal lawyers – they’ve got to stay around. But lawyers that write contracts,
and lots of accountants; maybe that kind of education is not such a fabulous
idea. Educating people to go into what I call the personal services is a good
idea – some of which don’t require all that much education – so electricians,
carpenters, plumbers, roofers – skilled trades.
‘This is a very new thought for the highly-educated, white-collar class to
think that they may have to compete with low-wage foreign workers. Manufacturers
have been doing that for generations. But accountants, lawyers, intellectuals?’
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