Don't flatter yourselves, it's not only an IT issue. I remember working as a sales manager in the 90's, when all the kids I used to beat up in school were all of a sudden cool and hip for once. Nerds became the needed elite, and a a result demanded top dollar for their supremacy.

I always said that it would come to an end. As more and more people were buying computers at home and becoming more IT savvy, the bottom would fall out of the market if they weren't prepared to work for less. Because IT was initially something nobody knew about and creating new code was like being given a blank cheque, there was no way to determine value of services and thus, geeks were setting the bar, as high as they could. I had a friend who wrote a Python script the banks bought and he made millions INSTANTLY, literally one night begging for someone to buy him a beer and the next day ready to buy the bar. He sailed on for about 6 months until someone (locally) provided new scripts for less. He committed suicide the next day after losing his deal with the bank.

It's just like an overnight rockstar sensation, rise and crash.

I know this seems off topic but really it's the same thing with outsourcing. When an IT employee used to work for ridiculous amounts of money, the market fell and they weren't prepared to work for less and got laid off because someone else can do the job for less. Whether the quality is the same or not, North American consumers are cheap as hell and don't mind sacrificing quality for price (proof, WalMart, Black Friday riots etc.) People think they are actually being clever by being cheap, not simply wise with money or thrifty but EL CHEAPO !

I've said it here a thousand times, this topic never came up before, eventually IT will be a minimum wage role, like working in the mail room or taking phone orders for $10/hr. Why anyone would invest so much time, money and effort to learn a skill that rapidly ISN'T a skill, is beyond me.

I have trades licences, thankfully not everyone at home wants to fix their own car or machine their own parts. When they do, I usually get the repair work anyway after they screw it up. But it's not a field of overnight successes. It's a union field where fewer people have the skills and those who are self taught cause more problem than they began with. You can't just find, copy and paste scripts from the web.

IT was a dead end role before it got going. Remember when having A+ got you a job? Then you needed an MCSE, then a CCNA, now you need a degree in computer science to get even a half decent job, even then its a very competitive industry because everyone felt that simply upgrading certs would get them that million dollar start up role. Then again, a great deal of, the people doing it have no concept of business operations because business operations were as new to them as IT was to their employers.
CHEAP outsourcing:
Because people have decided that buying substandard crap from Asia is better than buying quality from North America for a few percent more, now even Canada is being flooded with bloody WalMarts (which, thankfully, often don't do as well here as in the US or aren't allowed to open at all in many cities). As a result, many good quality Canadian owned outlets are now closing the doors, even The Hudsons Bay company, which dates back WELL before WalMart, is taking a hit and has shut down Zellers (their discount outlets).

What does all this have to do with IT outsourcing and lack of quality employees? Everything, because PEOPLE in North America have such standards and only want CHEAP, not good, CHEAP. It's not just an 'IT' problem, it's everything company's make and consumers buy.