However, the report states that offshoring in most cases is beneficial to both sending and receiving countries, and in the case of the US, doesn’t adversely affect the domestic IT workforce. For example, the theory that US tech workers are losing their jobs to their Indian or Chinese counterparts has gained popularity with the rise of offshoring in the sector over the past five years.
But based on figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, more IT jobs are available today in the US than at the height of the Internet boom, and IT is forecast to be one of the hottest areas of job growth in the coming decade.
To date, the annual job loss attributable to offshoring is approximately 2 to 3 percent of the IT workforce. But this is small compared with the much higher level of job loss and creation that occurs every year in the US, the report states.
The report also found that while standardized, lower-skill jobs have typically been the first ones to go offshore, there is now global competition for higher-level skills, such as computer research, as well. The improvements in higher education and investment in R&D in India and China have only increased the likelihood that these types of jobs will move offshore.
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