Editing Workforce (section)

==Globalisation of the labour market==
{{main|Global workforce}}
The global [[Labour supply|supply of labour]] almost doubled in absolute numbers between the 1980s and early 2000s, with half of that growth coming from Asia.<ref>{{cite web|author=Freeman, Richard |url=http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=4542 |title=What Really Ails Europe (and America): The Doubling of the Global Workforce |publisher=The Globalist |date=2010-03-05 |access-date=2013-07-06}}</ref> At the same time, the rate at which new workers entered the workforce in the Western world began to decline. The growing pool of global labour is accessed by employers in more advanced economies through various methods, including imports of goods, [[offshoring]] of production, and [[Human migration|immigration]].<ref name="IMF07">{{cite book |url=http://www.imf.org/external/Pubs/FT/WEO/2007/01/pdf/c5.pdf| title=World Economic Outlook Chapter 5: The Globalization of Labor | publisher=International Monetary Fund | year=2007 | isbn=978-0511760594}}</ref> [[Global labor arbitrage]], the practice of accessing the lowest-cost workers from all parts of the world, is partly a result of this enormous growth in the workforce. While most of the absolute increase in this global labour supply consisted of less-educated workers (those without higher education), the relative supply of workers with higher education increased by about 50 percent during the same period.<ref name="IMF07"/> From 1980 to 2010, the global workforce grew from 1.2 to 2.9 billion people. According to a 2012 report by the McKinsey Global Institute, this was caused mostly by developing nations, where there was a "farm to factory" transition. Non-farming jobs grew from 54 percent in 1980 to almost 73 percent in 2010. This industrialization took an estimated 620 million people out of poverty and contributed to the economic development of China, India and others.<ref name="MGI12">{{cite web |url=http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/employment_and_growth/the_world_at_work| title=The world at work: Jobs, pay and skills for 3.5 billion people | publisher=McKinsey Global Institute | date=June 2012|first1=Richard|last1=Dobbs|first2=Dominic|last2=Barton|first3=Anu|last3=Madgavkar|first4=Eric|last4=Labaye|first5=James|last5=Manyika|first6=Charles|last6=Roxburgh|first7=Susan|last7=Lund|first8=Siddarth|last8=Madhav|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130409040148/http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/employment_and_growth/the_world_at_work|archive-date=April 9, 2013}}</ref>
[[File:Convergys Baguio.JPG|thumb|263x263px|[[Convergys]] [[call center]] in [[Baguio]], the Philippines (example of a third party outsourcing firm)]]
Under the "old" international division of labor, until around 1970, [[underdevelopment|underdeveloped areas]] were incorporated into the [[world economy]] principally as suppliers of minerals and agricultural commodities. However, as developing economies are merged into the world economy, more production takes place in these economies.<ref name="EncylG">{{cite book | url=http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/geography/n814.xml | title=Encyclopedia of Geography | publisher=Sage Pubs | editor=Warf, Barney | article=New International Division of Labor | year=2010 | isbn=978-1412956970}}</ref> This has led to a trend of transference, or what is also known as the "[[New international division of labour|global industrial shift]] ", in which production processes are relocated from developed countries (such as the [[United States|US]], [[Europe]]an countries, and [[Japan]]) to developing countries in Asia (such as [[China]], [[Vietnam]], and [[India]]), [[Mexico]] and [[Central America]]. This is because companies search for the cheapest locations to manufacture and assemble components, so low-cost labor-intensive parts of the manufacturing process are shifted to the developing world where costs are substantially lower. 

But not only manufacturing processes are shifted to the developing world. The growth of [[offshore outsourcing]] of IT-enabled services (such as [[offshore custom software development]] and [[business process outsourcing]]) is linked to the availability of large amounts of reliable and affordable communication infrastructure following the telecommunication and Internet expansion of the late 1990s.<ref name=Telcom.out>{{cite book|title=Managing Projects in Telecommunication Service |url=https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0470047674 |isbn=0470047674 | first=Mostafa Hashem | last=Sherif |date=2006 | publisher=John Wiley & Sons |quote=(chapter) COMMUNICATION AND OUTSOURCING ... Roche, 1998}}</ref>