	Introduction

Offshoring, also known as offshore outsourcing, initially referred to the practice of U.S. businesses contracting with firms beyond U.S. borders to provide services that would otherwise have been performed by in-house employees in white-collar occupations (e.g., computer systems designers and call center operators). However, sending abroad the jobs of workers in blue-collar occupations employed on textile and auto assembly lines, for example, has been taking place for decades. The extension of offshoring from U.S. manufacturers to service providers that became apparent in the past decade has heightened public policy concerns about the extent of job loss and foregone employment opportunities among U.S. workers. The only data available on jobs lost to the out-of-country relocation of work come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS's) series on extended mass layoffs. Since 2004, BLS has asked firms with at least 50 employees that let go at least 50 workers in layoffs that lasted 31 or more days whether the firms moved the laid-off workers' jobs out of the United States. Given the series' exclusion of small companies and focus on large layoffs, it underestimates jobs lost to offshoring and is better at picking up losses at manufacturers than at service providers. Not surprisingly, then, the BLS series has consistently found that relatively few job losses result from the movement of work away from the United States. As a result of the dearth of data, some have stepped in to provide more information on the extent of offshoring today and in coming years. They estimated that more than 14 million jobs in 49 service occupations, representing about 11% of total U.S. employment in 2001, have attributes that could allow them to be sent overseas (e.g., no in-person customer servicing required; an IT-enabled work process that can be accomplished via telecommuting; jobs that can be routinized; a fairly wide gap between a job's pay in the United States compared to in a destination country; and a destination country having few language, institutional, and cultural barriers). About 9.4% of total U.S. employment in 2000 was found to be in offshorable industries, according to one of their estimates. They examined the task content of 457 service occupations to rank their relative vulnerability to being offshored. BLS undertook an examination of the vulnerability to offshoring of service-providing occupations as well. In 2007, there were some 30 million jobs in these 160 offshorable service-providing occupations; they accounted for over one-fifth of total employment in that year. The skills and education of this most vulnerable group range widely:
Fifteen are office and administrative support occupations [e.g., bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks], with relatively low education or training requirements. Another 11 are professional and related occupations [e.g., computer operators, programmers, and support specialists], which generally possess higher educational requirements. Blinder stated that "Contrary to conventional wisdom, the more offshorable occupations are not low-end jobs, whether measured by wages or by education. Dell, for example, returned some help services to the United States due to customer dissatisfaction. Other U.S. firms reportedly had to employ IT service providers located in the United States to fix software produced abroad. In summary, a comprehensive regularly collected data series does not exist on the number of U.S. workers who have lost their jobs to offshore outsourcing. Empirical analyses have focused on determining those jobs with characteristics that make them susceptible to movement beyond U.S. borders. This approach may overstate the number of jobs that actually have been or will be lost to offshoring because it does not consider other factors that may affect employers' decisions about the location in which work is performed.
Offshoring, also known as offshore outsourcing, is the term that came into use more than a decade ago to describe a practice among companies located in the United States of contracting with businesses beyond U.S. borders to perform services that would otherwise have been provided by in-house employees in white-collar occupations (e.g., computer programmers and systems designers, accounting clerks and accountants). The term is equally applicable to U.S. firms' offshoring the jobs of blue-collar workers on textile and auto assembly lines, for example, which has been taking place for many decades. The extension of offshoring from U.S. manufacturers to service providers has heightened public policy concerns about the extent of job loss and the adequacy of existing programs to help unemployed workers adjust to the changing mix of jobs located in the United States so they can find new positions.
No comprehensive data exist on the number of production and services workers who have lost their jobs as a result of the movement of work outside U.S. borders. The only regularly collected statistics on jobs lost to the out-of-country relocation of work come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS's) series on extended mass layoffs. Since 2004, BLS has asked firms with at least 50 employees that let go at least 50 workers in layoffs that lasted 31 or more days whether the firms moved the laid-off workers' jobs out of the United States. Given the series' exclusion of small companies and focus on large layoffs, it underestimates the number of jobs lost to offshoring.
Researchers have tried to fill this gap by determining which occupations possess characteristics that make them relatively vulnerable to being offshored (e.g., routine task content and able to be performed at a distance from customers due to advances in communications technology) and the number of persons employed in those occupations in a given year. Those studies usually have focused on occupations that provide services. One analysis by the BLS estimated that in 2007, 30 million people were employed in service-providing occupations it found to be potentially offshorable; they accounted for over one-fifth of total employment in that year. The service-providing occupations that BLS deemed most vulnerable to being offshored had quite different skill requirements: administrative support occupations (e.g., office clerks) typically have lower education or training requirements than professional and related occupations (e.g., computer programmers). One of the few studies that includes both production and services occupations similarly concluded that, whether measured by education or wages, jobs with offshorable characteristics run the gamut from less to more skilled. According to one of Blinder's estimates, about 29 million workers were employed in offshorable production and services occupations, or a little over one-fifth of total U.S. employment in 2004.
This approach may overstate the number of jobs that actually have been or will be lost to offshoring because it does not consider other factors that may affect employers' decisions about the location in which work is performed. Some observers note cases of firms bringing jobs back to the United States for such reasons as dissatisfaction with the quality of service being provided, narrowing of the wage gap between U.S. and some nations' workers, and increases in the cost of shipping goods to the United States. Others point to strategies that offshore outsourcers have used to work around some obstacles.