Spurred on by new technology and a shift in the way corporate America does business, employers will be moving about 3.3 million white-collar service jobs and $136 billion in wages overseas in the next 15 years as they seek lower costs, plus increased production and higher profits, according to Forrester Research Inc.
Leading the way will be the information technology industry - the sector often credited with fueling the U.S. economic boom of the 1990s - says the Cambridge firm's forecast.
Back-office accounting and customer-calling work are already being shipped abroad. But in the future, professional positions in technology, law, art, architecture, life sciences and business management will be, too, Forrester says.
Its report is one of the first attempts to quantify the jobs that will be lost to overseas operations.
"We estimate that of the 700 service job categories in the United States, about 550 will be impacted by offshore outsourcing in some way over the next 15 years," said analyst John C. McCarthy, the report's author.
"Companies are doing it because they feel they can get better quality work for 50 percent of the cost," McCarthy said. "This is another way of making the U.S. economy more efficient, more competitive and more prosperous."
Global outsourcing is a growing business, said Bob Pryor, a vice president of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and head of the firm's outsourcing practice in the Americas. In the past, Pryor said, U.S. companies relied on foreign workers with H-1B visas to reduce costs. "Now they are focusing on offshoring," or sending the work overseas.
In the services sector, basic information technology support services, computer programming and office work are leading the trend.
In 2000, computer and back-office work accounted for significant portions of the 102,674 jobs shipped abroad, representing 27,171 and 53,987 positions, respectively, McCarthy said.
By 2015, he said, 472,632 computer jobs and 1.65 million office positions will have been shifted to places such as China, India, the Philippines and Russia.
Some U.S. companies aim to maximize production by opening sites or contracting with foreign service providers in other time zones, which lets them triple the amount of work that's done by extending the work day to 24 hours.
Forrester's McCarthy said U.S. workers can benefit if they have the training and expertise to lead or manage offshore work from their stateside bases.
"There are definitely cost savings," said Suzy Punj, senior vice president of Strategic Research Institute in New York. "You would have to pay someone $40,000 here to do call-center or back-office work. There, they would make about $4,000, which is a good salary [in India]. There, they receive the perks of car services to and from the house, an apartment and free lunch. So people stick around."
General Electric Co., Boeing Co. and Nortel Networks Ltd. are among the companies sending programming jobs to India, Ireland, Russia and China, according to Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn.
Oracle Corp. has moved more than 2,000 software development jobs to India, while Capital One and Ford Motor Co. have moved back-office jobs, such as payroll processing, to India, currently the country of choice for many companies, McCarthy said.