India high-tech industry out of workers

Nearly two decades into India's phenomenal growth as an international center for high technology, the industry has a problem: It's running out of workers. Graduates are leaving universities that are mired in theory classes, sometimes so poorly funded they don't have computer labs. Even students from the best colleges can be dulled by cram schools and left without the most basic communication skills, according to industry leaders. "The problem is not a shortage of people," said Mohandas Pai, human resources chief for Infosys Technologies. "It's a shortage of trained people."

From the outside, this nation of 1.03 billion, with its immense English-speaking population, may appear to have a bottomless supply of cheap workers with enough education to claim more outsourced Western jobs. But things look far different in India. On the most basic level, it's a problem of success. The high-tech industry is expanding so fast that the population can't keep up with the demand for high-end workers. Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest software company, hires around 3,000 people a month. Consulting firm Accenture plans to hire 8,000 in the next six months and IBM says it will bring on more than 50,000 additional people in India by 2010.

A shortage means something feared here: higher wages. Much of India's success rests on the fact that its legions of software programmers work for far less than those in the West - often for one-fourth the salary. If industry can't find enough workers to keep wages low, the companies that look to India for things like software development will turn to competitors, from Poland to the Philippines, and the entire industry could stumble.

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