WTO: Outsourcing not behind job loss
The WTO annual trade report is set to dispel greatly exaggerated notions that IT jobs are being sucked dry by cheaper providers from low income countries.
The report questioned estimates forwarded by British associations and business consultants on the extent of domestic IT jobs exported to countries boasting of cheaper workforces.
'The most curious aspect of this heated debate is that all the expectations and fears of outsourcing and the backlash against it in the high income countries are based on very partial, selective information, mostly from private sources or anecdotal evidence.''
The WTO report further points out that the estimated $45 billion of offshored IT services made up less than 10% of world exports of business services, and less than 2.5% of commercial services for the same period. It predicts a continuous upward trend for business process outsourcing but assures that there would be no dramatic impact on the employment status of both sending and receiving countries: “ New statistical information has pointed to the 'modest' size of the services offshoring trend if viewed from a macroeconomic perspective.“
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