More U.S. service jobs heading offshore

The strike that crippled two of the nation's busiest shipping ports was settled this week, but the trend it spotlighted — the offshoring of service jobs — is expected to continue to grow across the USA.

The eight-day walkout by clerical workers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach largely centered on the outsourcing of their jobs overseas and elsewhere in the U.S., says Craig Merrilees, a spokesman for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Shippers denied outsourcing jobs, but the tentative settlement restricts the practice, according to the Associated Press.

Yet service companies have been sending jobs abroad in large numbers the past decade to cut labor costs — a trend that accelerated in the recession and is expected to continue the next few years before slowing after 2016. About 663,000 large-company jobs in information technology, human resources, finance and purchasing — the category that includes the port workers — have been offshored since 2002, according to The Hackett Group. Read more >>