More on outsourcing

Six months ago or so there was a lot of attention given to the number of jobs that were going "off shore." Millions of jobs were being lost, mostly in the "knowledge" businesses (writing code, developing systems, even answering "help lines").

Where have they all gone? "Nowhere" is the assessment of this economist.

Now ... we can add some actual figures to the overheated debate. The Government Accountability Office has issued its first review of the data, and one undeniable conclusion to be drawn from it is that outsourcing is not quite the job-destroying tsunami it's been made out to be. Of the 1.5 million jobs lost last year in "mass layoffs'' - that is, when 50 or more workers are let go at once - less than 1 percent were attributed to overseas relocation; that was a decline from the previous year. In 2002, only about 4 percent of the money directly invested by American companies overseas went to the developing countries that are most likely to account for outsourced jobs - and most of that money was concentrated in manufacturing.

Read the whole thing. Here are footnotes to the article (links to the various information sources quoted in the article).