How likely is it that your job will be shipped overseas? According to a survey by CareerBuilder.com and researchers at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the odds are not in your favor if your services can be delivered electronically and don’t require much face-to-face interaction with your superiors.
According to the survey, 13 percent of employers said their companies outsourced work to third-party vendors outside the country in 2007. The same amount said they would do so in 2008. In addition, 7 percent of employers transferred job functions to foreign affiliates in 2007 and 9 percent plan to do so in 2008.
Among employers who send work offshore, 44 percent estimate less than 5 percent of their jobs will ultimately be sent overseas while 39 percent project more than 10 percent of their jobs will eventually be sent offshore. Also, more of them are offshoring high-wage, high-skill jobs that were once thought to be immune to global competition.
Who is Most at Risk
The majority of employers who send work offshore (69 percent) believe high-skill service positions are at equal or more risk of being sent abroad as low-skill jobs. Examples of jobs companies plan to offshore include:
Computer programmers, 32 percent.
Software developers. 32 percent.
Customer service personnel, 25 percent.
Systems analysts, 16 percent.
Sales managers, 8 percent.
Graphic designers, 8 percent.
Human resources personnel, 7 percent.
General managers, 6 percent.
Marketing personnel, 5 percent.
Among industries, technology services, telecommunications, insurance, manufacturing, engineering, banking and finance, oil, travel, utilities and communications all reported higher rates of sending jobs offshore.
The study indicates, of all the respondents, older workers were more susceptible to being displaced than younger workers.
Of all workers who reported being displaced by off-shore workers, one-in-five (21 percent) said they were reassigned within the company. Seventy-one percent were let go. Of those who were reassigned, 76 percent reported it was a lateral move while 7 percent reported they benefited from either a promotion, higher compensation or both. Of those who left the company, 81 percent went to another employer that was not aggressively sending work overseas.
While U.S. workers have lost jobs as a result of work being sent offshore, companies assert that the practice ultimately benefits the American workforce. Twenty-eight percent of employers who have sent work abroad said it has already enabled them to create new, better jobs of different types in the U.S.
Cost Savings Cited
Cost-savings is the primary motivator for sending work overseas, according to 64 percent of respondents. Looking at information technology specifically, nearly half (49 percent) say they save over $20,000 per head on average by offshoring. Fifteen percent of employers say they are saving more than $50,000 per head. Twenty-seven percent of respondents cited availability of skills and 19 percent pointed to plans for expansion in a particular market as their main reasons for offshoring.
Offshoring companies are predominantly drawn to South Asia with 44 percent of employers who offshore stating they sent jobs to India. Others key locations include China (24 percent), Mexico (12 percent), Canada (9 percent), Germany (8 percent), the Philippines (7 percent) and the U.K. (7 percent).
When respondents who don’t send work offshore were asked why their companies chose not to, one-in-five (21 percent) said they felt it is important to keep jobs in the U.S. Fourteen percent reported their customers would not respond favorably and 10 percent said they work with sensitive data. Difficulty to building trust across borders, the cost associated with monitoring workers and shipping/materials, and the availability of a skilled labor pool abroad were also cited.
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How likely is it that your job will be shipped overseas? According to a survey by CareerBuilder.com and researchers at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the odds are not in your favor if your services can be delivered electronically and don’t require much face-to-face interaction with your superiors. 
