Offshoring accounted for less than 2 percent of IT layoffs in the first quarter of 2004, according to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which has begun culling which jobs are lost to firms overseas.
The numbers helped provide new data in the debate about how many IT jobs are actually being shipped off-shore in the technology industry. According to the BLS numbers, IT related categories that were offshored were higher than the 2 percent overall figure.
The BLS report, ”Extended Mass Layoffs Associated With Domestic and Overseas Relocations,” for the first quarter of this year, said 239,361 private sector nonfarm workers who were ”separated from their jobs” for at least 31 days in the first quarter of 2004. Of that amount, 4,633 workers were associated with the movement of work outside of the country, according to the BLS data.
Of those 4,633 workers that were reported as being ”offshored” by the BLS, 65 percent came from manufacturing sectors. The Midwest bore the brunt in this category with 34 percent of the job loss, followed by the South at 31 percent, the West at 27 percent and the Northeast at only 8 percent.
IT-related employment numbers were not not specifically separated in the BLS report, though they were in part contained under the manufacturing numbers under the Computer and electronic products heading. By that measure, 785 jobs were offshored out of a total of 3,912 job losses, or about 20 percent.
Under another sub-category called Information showed that 18 percent of job losses were offshored (1,449 out of 7,837 jobs lost in that sub-group).
Under the category titled Professional and Technical Services, 3,363 jobs were lost in the first quarter; the BLS said it was unable to provide accurate statistics for which jobs in this number were relocated elsewhere in the world.
The BLS said the numbers are by no means comprehensive or complete and do not cover the entire spectrum of US Labor activity that may have been affected by offshoring over the last several years. However, the statistics are based on layoffs at companies employing 50 or more workers and are counted when at least 50 employees filed for unemployment insurance during a five week period with a layoff of more than 30 days.
The labor report is the first time the BLS has included offshored jobs since it began to track that group in January 2004.
The data follows a wave of research looking at the offshoring trend in the IT industry.
A recent study from Meta Group found that 20 percent of its survey respondents offshore IT jobs. In March, Gartner Group released a report that indicated only 5 percent of US IT jobs were currently offshored with an estimated 25 percent to be offshored by 2010.
This article was first published on InternetNews.com.
Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020
Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 05, 2020
The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
August 14, 2020
Datamation is the leading industry resource for B2B data professionals and technology buyers. Datamation's focus is on providing insight into the latest trends and innovation in AI, data security, big data, and more, along with in-depth product recommendations and comparisons. More than 1.7M users gain insight and guidance from Datamation every year.
Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on Datamation and our other data and technology-focused platforms.
Advertise with Us
Property of TechnologyAdvice.
© 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this
site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives
compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products
appear on this site including, for example, the order in which
they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies
or all types of products available in the marketplace.