The article entitled, Expatriate Hiring Stalls, by Jonathan Katz, reports that the number one reason for hiring outside the United States is operations functions. Forty-five percent of the 99 respondents to the survey, across various industries, said they are keeping their foreign workforce levels the same despite the economic downfall. Another 35% of the respondents say they will decrease their number of expatriates. The manufacturing industry is the largest industry response group (accounting for 29% of the respondents) in the survey. So if manufacturing companies are sending work overseas, what does that mean for reliability engineers and predictive maintenance professionals? It means that there will be less manufacturing in the country, and therefore less potential work for people in reliability and predictive maintenance. The more manufacturing jobs that are sent overseas, the less of a need there will be for predictive maintenance professionals and reliability engineers in the United States.

People in the reliability industry and predictive maintenance industry should pay close attention to the number of expatriates being used in the manufacturing industry. The survey done by Sibson Consulting shows that organizations expected to increase their use of expatriates is 25%; 54% are not expecting any change; while 21% are expecting to decrease their number of expatriates