New study says more IT jobs at risk

At the end of April, The Wharton School and CareerBuilder.com released new research on offshoring based on data from 3,000 hiring managers and HR professionals.

If you’re in any of the sectors audited, you should be aware of some of the findings. With abounding uncertainty regarding the long-term outlook of both companies and employees, I found this report to be valuable and insightful because since 2003 I have been warning that nobody is bulletproof when it comes to offshoring.

Now, with business results dicey in many organizations, and the economy making it tougher to get new investment funds, the economics of using overseas staff and management become ever more persuasive.

Here are some of the key findings:

69% of employers believe high skill service positions are now at equal or greater risk of being sent overseas than low skill jobs. Examples they cite included programmers, software developers, marketing, system analysts and general managers.

Industries cited as being at risk included technology services, telecom, engineering, banking, utilities, and communications. For the most part, these are organizations that haven’t yet felt a great impact in the management ranks from offshoring.

Regarding what happened to those employees who had their jobs sent overseas - 71% were let go.

44% of those who are offshoring are using India as the locale of choice, China picked up 24% and Mexico 12%.

Most employers felt they could save money while keeping their service and quality at the same levels.

If you’re in a role that, for the most part, is dependent upon decision-tree logic to make decisions, you need to be concerned about this. Research had already shown that accountants can be replaced (TurboTax), lawyers can be replaced (Completecase.com), and medical doctors can be replaced with MRI’s now being read overnight in South Asia for hospitals in the west.