IT Offshoring and American Labor

Abstract

This article presents an overview of the offshoring of information technology (IT), especially software and IT-enabled services, and its impacts on American labor. Topics include the history of offshoring politics in the United States, differences in attitudes between politicians and economists in their attitudes about the severity of the offshoring “problem,” national differences in types of offshoring providers, technological and other drivers of offshoring, reasons to offshore, characteristics of work amenable to offshoring, the employment impact in the United States, political and educational responses to offshoring in the United States, and the roles of labor unions and big business.