| Growth in the offshoring of information technology, business office, and other service-providing occupations will cause the loss of an estimated 2.4 million jobs in some 250 U.S. cities between 2004 and 2015, according to a report released recently by the Brookings Institution.
The offshoring of service jobs, including ones held by college-educated professionals who previously thought their jobs were immune to foreign competition, has “created a new source of job insecurity,” and the movement of work to other countries is expected to grow over the coming decade, especially in information services and “back-office” services, the study said.
The projections showed that overall, job losses over the 11-year period are likely to average a modest 2.2 percent of 2004 employment. However, in the 28 cities identified as the most vulnerable to offshoring because of their job base, losses will be greater — between 2.6 percent and 4.3 percent, or approximately 600,000 jobs, about one-fourth of the total 2.4 million job loss projected for metropolitan areas.
The most vulnerable metropolitan areas — which include Boston, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, Dallas, San Francisco, and Seattle — have higher proportions of residents employed in computer programming, software engineering, accounting, telemarketing, and other occupations that are highly susceptible to being offshored, the report said.
The Impications of Service Offshoring for Metropolitan Economies is at www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20070131_offshoring.pdf. |
