Most New Hires U.S.-Based

The bulk of overseas hiring will be in support of overseas markets, not new offshoring, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

U.S. multinational companies will continue to expand overseas over the next 12 months, but the great majority of new jobs outside the U.S. will serve expanding overseas markets and will not be jobs transferred offshore from the U.S., according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers Management Barometer, a quarterly survey of top executives in a cross-section of large, multinational businesses.

”There’s no giant sucking sound coming from large U.S. businesses planning to expand their workforce,” said Frank Brown, global leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Advisory practice. ”The vast majority of planned new overseas jobs are related to expansion of overseas markets, rather than to offshoring by large U.S. businesses.”

According to the survey, 46 percent of surveyed companies plan to increase employment over the next 12 months, adding an average of 4.4 percent net new-hires. Of these new jobs, 3.3 percent are expected to be in the U.S., and 1.1 percent in other countries. Workers for those companies expecting to hire are primarily U.S. based, with only 21 percent overseas employment on average.

Of the planned new overseas jobs, a large majority, 73 percent of the total, will be workers serving their local marketplace, while 27 percent will serve markets outside their home country, including the U.S.

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Management Barometer is developed and compiled with assistance from the opinion and economic research firm of BSI Global Research. The findings are from first quarter 2004 interviews with 82 U.S.-based companies. These companies average 30,064 employees in their total global workforce.

This article was first published on cioupdate.com.