Offshoring, for those who aren’t familiar with this term, is the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign shores, a very unpopular idea for many, especially those in manufacturing, information technology and customer service, the industries that appear to be the hardest hit – so far.

Now while I understand the concern about the offshoring of American jobs, in so much of what I have read I have found it very difficult to quantify what impact offshoring has really had on the American economy and job availability.

Just as in any debate there are supporters and dissenters, depending on your frame of reference and closeness to the subject.

That’s why I wanted to see what information I could locate to either support or destroy any notions about the benefits of offshoring.

Let’s start with the good news.

Last week I wrote about the graying of the American labor pool and the need to consider what the future workforce would look like as baby boomers begin to retire.

According to the industrial news room at ThomasNet (http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/archives/ 2006/11/priority_shipping_offshore_outsourcing_highly_skilled_jobs.html), in order to deal with this retiring workforce while maintaining our current level of productivity, “15.6 million (5 percent) more workers will be needed by 2015 …thus…the U.S. economy will actually require a greater — not shrinking — number of workers. And offshoring will help satisfy that demand.”

Okay, that sounds promising.

Another positive twist is something I read from Adecco, the international recruiting firm, which indicated that U.S. companies actually save 58 cents for every dollar that is moved offshore. (http://www.adecco.com/resources/adecco +briefing+paper+on+offshoring+august+2006.pdf)

The idea is that companies can now reinvest this savings in new business opportunities or pay out to shareholders. Ultimately, the hope is that the savings will be passed along to the American consumer.

Finally, throughout the materials I’ve read it is repeatedly stated that many of the jobs in today’s market are service sector jobs where you need direct customer contact. Jobs in hotels, restaurants, schools, healthcare and retail are not conducive to offshoring, not to mention those in the arts, entertainment or sports.

That being said, it makes sense that as employees we need to refocus our career plans and as employers we need to re-examine how we value certain jobs.

Hey, maybe teachers will finally be paid what their worth!

Join me for future blogs when I write about the bad and the ugly parts of offshoring.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 8:47 am and is filed under Organizational Change, Leadership. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.