Are arguments about jobs going overseas still a big barrier to offshoring?
The US has probably been the most intense at global sourcing of IT services. About 70 per cent of multinational companies there are doing some form of global sourcing of software or IT services from countries such as India. In the past 12 months, the rate of growth of employment in the US economy has been 1.8 per cent, whereas for the past 10 years the average rate has been 1.2 per cent. So offshoring has not seriously displaced jobs. In fact, the displacement of jobs in the US through productivity growth has been four per cent per year. That does not mean companies should stop being more productive. About 60 per cent of our business comes from the US. But our highest attrition level of employees is in the US – the rate is more than 12 per cent there. In India it is 10 per cent. That is a sign that software professionals are going back into shortage. There are not enough people entering the engineering stream in Western countries, which is a serious problem that governments are very aw
