Impacts Of Offshoring On Jobs And Small U S Manufacturers

Offshoring, also known as offshore outsourcing, is the term now being used 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. 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 decades. The extension of offshoring from U.S. manufacturers to service providers has heightened public policy concerns about the extent of job loss and foregone employment opportunities among U.S. workers. This concern is especially pertinent to policymakers because of a national unemployment rate persistently exceeding 9 per cent despite the end of the latest recession. This book discusses the impacts of offshoring on jobs and small U.S. manufacturers.

Much attention has focused on the offshoringÓ of services to lower-wage locations abroad. Offshoring generally refers to an org. purchase of goods or services from abroad that were previously produced domestically. Extensive public debate has arisen about both the potential benefits of services offshoring, such as lower consumer prices & higher U.S. productivity, as well as the potential costs, such as increased job displacement for selected U.S. workers. This report: provides an overview of experts' views on the potential impacts of services offshoring; describes the types of policies that have been proposed in response to offshoring; & highlights some key areas where add'l. research might help advance the debate about offshoring. Illus.

This report defines offshoring in detail, describes the wide-ranging effects that offshoring can have on employment both positively and negatively, and outlines the policy implications, suggesting ways to limit the downside of offshoring while building trust among stakeholders.

A follow-up to Tim Hutzel's previous book, Keeping Your Business in the USA: Profit Globally While Operating Locally, this book tells the stories of companies that have sent their jobs outside of the USA and the negative effects this had on the quality of their products and services, employees, supply chain providers, and consumers. Bringing Jobs Back to the USA: Rebuilding America's Manufacturing Through Reshoring reveals the motivation these companies had to offshore their jobs as well as the errors of omission they made by not understanding the true cost of offshoring. Exposing the true cost of offshoring to US organizations and citizens, it supplies concrete suggestions to help government officials and activists prevent offshoring and incentivize reshoring. The book provides food for thought for businesses currently thinking about sending US jobs to foreign countries. Outlining a roadmap for reshoring using a step-by-step methodology, it provides business leaders with the understanding to make the right decisions regarding reshoring their products back to America.

This paper estimates the effects of offshoring on productivity in U.S. manufacturing industries between 1992 and 2000, using instrumental variables estimation to address the potential endogeneity of offshoring. It finds that service offshoring has a significant positive effect on productivity in the US, accounting for around 11 percent of productivity growth during this period. Offshoring material inputs also has a positive effect on productivity, but the magnitude is smaller accounting for approximately 5 percent of productivity growth. There is a small negative effect of less than half a percent on employment when industries are finely disaggregated (450 manufacturing industries). However, this affect disappears at more aggregate industry level of 96 industries indicating that there is sufficient growth in demand in other industries within these broadly defined classifications to offset any negative effects.

The engineering enterprise is a pillar of U.S. national and homeland security, economic vitality, and innovation. But many engineering tasks can now be performed anywhere in the world. The emergence of "offshoring"- the transfer of work from the United States to affiliated and unaffiliated entities abroad - has raised concerns about the impacts of globalization. The Offshoring of Engineering helps to answer many questions about the scope, composition, and motivation for offshoring and considers the implications for the future of U.S. engineering practice, labor markets, education, and research. This book examines trends and impacts from a broad perspective and in six specific industries - software, semiconductors, personal computer manufacturing, construction engineering and services, automobiles, and pharmaceuticals. The Offshoring of Engineering will be of great interest to engineers, engineering professors and deans, and policy makers, as well as people outside the engineering community who are concerned with sustaining and strengthening U.S. engineering capabilities in support of homeland security, economic vitality, and innovation.