Employing people in another countries to do the work once done by locals become a common practice in western nations - not only USA. This outsourcing trend significantly lowers labour and other costs especially for large companies. It is estimated that a quarter of all business process outsourcing is now going offshore.
Developing regions like India, South Africa and Eastern Europe offer a competitive and productive workforce. New technologies, and an increasingly educated workforce, have made poorer nations highly competitive in a range of value-added industries, including software engineering and financial services. Anyone who works with computers or technology is now on tenuous links with the workforce. Previously disconnected people can access the same information through satellites, phone lines and fibre-optic cables. Those
people have exactly the same chance to access and apply knowledge. This proces is called
‘democratisation of information’ and is highly connected with offshoring.
American workers will face direct global competition at almost every job level—from the mechanist to the software engineer to the Wall Street analyst. Any worker whose job does not require daily face-to-face interaction is now in jeopardy of being replaced by a lower-paid, equally skilled worker thousands of miles away. Several U.S. states are considering legislation to prohibit or severely restrict their state governments from contracting with companies that move jobs to low-wage developing countries, and labor unions, notably the Communications Workers of America, are lobbying Congress to prevent offshoring. According to economic theory although offshoring provides overall economic gains, it is also redistributive, with affected workers facing the prospect of job loss and wage pressures. A powerful set of policy tools can help navigate the ups and downs of this new global force, but so far most have not been deployed.
