Next on the Outsourcing List
Sheryl Matta earns roughly half what she did a few years ago, and every month the job market in her field seems to get worse. She points to a single cause: offshoring.
A medical transcriptionist, Ms. Matta took her latest pay cut in January, when the Rockville, Md., company she had been working for lost a contract to a competitor that outsources work to India, and she was laid off. After scrambling for a month, she found more work transcribing notes that physicians dictate -- but will need to work 15 hours a day at her new employer's 7-cents-a-line pay rate to hit her goal of earning $2,000 a month.
"I can't make a living at this anymore," says Ms. Matta, 54 years old, who lives in Odessa, Texas. The two phone lines and Internet account needed for her job chew up about $190 a month, and she can't afford to send her 16-year-old daughter to band camp for the French horn this summer. "Our jobs are being taken away, and we're very, very angry about it."
The list of jobs being affected by the movement of U.S. work to lower-cost countries around the world is growing. American companies have shipped computer-programming and call-center jobs to educated workers in India, the Philippines, Mexico, Canada and elsewhere for the past decade. Now, workers in a wide range of other fields, from accountants to electrical engineers, are discovering that their jobs aren't immune from offshore outsourcing.
"You've got to look in the rear-view mirror when there's someone else coming on the job scene who can do what you can do for less," says John McCarthy, a Forrester Research Inc. vice president. He estimates that as many as 588,000 U.S. white-collar jobs will be "offshored" by 2005 -- and a total of 1.6 million by 2010. The U.S. had a total of 138.3 million employed workers at the end of February.
India's National Association of Software and Service Companies estimates that more than 300,000 white-collar jobs have been created there since 2000 to serve overseas clients, many of them U.S. companies.
In some fields, there is theoretically no reason why the majority of positions couldn't be sent offshore, much as furniture and textile companies gradually moved production overseas or imported foreign-made products. So-called placeless jobs that don't require face-to-face customer interaction are increasingly at risk. Information-based jobs are especially vulnerable, because it is easy and cheap to transmit data almost anywhere these days.
About 10% of U.S. jobs in medical transcription, in which doctors' tape-recorded notes about cases are accessed electronically and typed into a computer by workers who must know medical terminology, already have been shifted to India, Pakistan, Canada and other countries, according to the American Association for Medical Transcription. Some estimates put the offshoring figure as high as 30%. The U.S. industry had about 99,000 workers in 2002, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"A lot of our members are single moms raising kids, and they're going to be put out of jobs," predicts Carrie Boatman, the Modesto, Calif., trade group's director of professional relations.
Yet even outsourcers acknowledge there are limits to how much work can be sent offshore. Geographic and cultural differences can make it hard for overseas workers to take over highly sophisticated jobs, says Manoj Jain, chief executive of Pipal Research Corp., a Chicago investment-research and consulting firm with a staff in India of 50 native-born employees holding a doctorate or M.B.A. degree.
Salaries for the most sought-after foreign workers also are surging, offsetting the cost savings that lure U.S. companies overseas. Mr. Jain recently gave 80% raises to his Indian employees in order to hold onto them. "The level playing field will happen sooner than people expect," he says.
And some job fields in the U.S. are regulated so closely that they are relatively insulated against offshoring. While radiologists often are mentioned as likely casualties as jobs move abroad, federal laws require that anyone interpreting X-rays and other images for U.S. hospitals be trained and licensed in the U.S. The loss of U.S. radiology work "sounds sensational and scary, but it is such a small, small part of the bigger picture," says Jon Berger, vice president of NightHawk Radiology Services LLC in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. The company has 30 radiologists in Australia -- all of them U.S. citizens paid more than $300,000 a year. That costs about the same as a U.S. radiologist, but the Sydney office is able to keep working after NightHawk's employees in the U.S. have gone home for the night.
Still, lots of other job categories are vulnerable. Here are several fields that experts say could see an increasing amount of U.S. work moved to other countries:
Accountants and tax professionals. Offshoring tax work is particularly attractive to many accounting firms, thanks to a large supply of qualified, lower-paid accountants in India and other countries. Mark Albrecht, CEO of outsourcing firm Xpitax LLC, estimates that about 100,000 U.S. tax returns will be handled overseas this year, including about 10,000 by the Braintree, Mass., company's staff of 75 tax professionals in Chennai, India.
Some outsourcers estimate that an accounting firm can save $50,000 for every 100 tax returns it ships to India. Xpitax electronically receives tax information from other accounting firms and then loads it onto an Internet server that can be accessed by its accountants in India.
So far, outsourcing has captured barely a speck of the U.S. tax-preparation business, which includes 132 million individual returns expected this year by the Internal Revenue Service. But temporary U.S. workers who help handle the tax-season rush from January to April could eventually be hit hard, some experts worry. Paid preparers complete more than half of all individual tax returns.
"It could eliminate a whole work force, but too much is unknown at this point to say with any accuracy whether this will happen," says Cindy Hockenberry, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Tax Professionals in Appleton, Wis.
Technical writers. The job of translating complex technological concepts and procedures into language that can be easily understood by a nontechnical audience can be done from afar because it usually doesn't require face-to-face collaboration with product developers. As a result, some companies are turning to English-skilled writers in India, Russia, China and other Asian countries to compose user guides and highly technical product manuals.
Some technical writers in the U.S. already have seen their wages and job opportunities plummet. Michele Davis, 39, a self-employed technical writer in Minneapolis, says she earned $100,000 three years ago -- but only $12,000 in 2003. She knows several technical writers who have been forced to take retail jobs paying about $10 an hour with no benefits.
"I've talked to several people whose jobs have gone to Korea," says Ms. Davis, who thinks her former clients have been moving writing jobs overseas. "It's cheaper to have them write it and have an editor in America correct it."
Her husband, Jon Phillips, a programming analyst for an Emerson Electric Co. unit, has been told that his job will be outsourced in about six months, after he completes a new database project. Mr. Phillips earns $80,000 a year, and estimates that his Indian replacement will earn about $20,000. An Emerson spokesman couldn't be reached for comment.
Architects and drafters. Many architecture firms have begun exporting drafting work and the creation of legal documents used during construction. Carl Roehling, president and CEO of SmithGroup, a 750-employee architecture firm with eight U.S. offices, estimates that about a quarter of large architecture firms currently offshore their construction-documents work, and more firms are considering the practice to remain competitive. SmithGroup currently offshores only construction-documents work for overseas projects.
Younger architects face the biggest threat. "I think we have less need to hire on a very basic level than we did six years ago," says an executive director for a West Coast firm that designs buildings for public-sector clients. The large firm, which asked not to be identified, cut its staff by 10% over the past few years and uses offshore drafters for some construction drawings.
Some students, particularly those in drafting programs, are nervous. Joyce Pelletier, enrolled in a computer-aided drafting program at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, N.Y., says many students could have diminished opportunities as a result of offshoring. "If you're going to design a Wendy's, it makes no difference whether you're here or in India," she says. Drafters "may be the steel worker of Pittsburgh," says Ms. Pelletier, 47.
Legal and investment research. Mindcrest Inc., of Chicago, provides legal research for companies and law firms and has a staff of 15 in Bombay, India. Much of its work in India is administrative tasks that typically would be handled by paralegals or junior lawyers, and involves document searches and researching laws in different areas, says George Hefferan, Mindcrest's vice president and general counsel.
The number of overseas employees doing such work is small but doubling about ever year at Mindcrest. The job shifts are larger when companies that have set up their own research departments outside the U.S. are included.
Aric Press, editor in chief of American Lawyer, a legal publication in New York, adds that "commodity legal work that is largely repetitive can be done by intelligent lawyers anywhere."
Meanwhile, some U.S. financial firms are creating fewer research jobs even as they gear up for the industry's expansion, says Peter Mintz, president of Fleetwood Research, an investment research firm in New York's Westchester County. "Instead of rushing to hire everyone back they're saying, 'Wait a minute, we don't have to hire back the same amount of people,' " he says.
Insurance claims processors. The job of processing claims involves inputting information from people seeking to be reimbursed from insurers, and then determining how much to pay based on insurance policies. That chore has gone digital in recent years, removing some of the barriers that kept processing jobs in the U.S.
Most of the insurance jobs being moved to other countries involve relatively simple data entry, but companies are now experimenting with shifting more-complicated tasks such as reading contracts and settling claims. "America doesn't have a lock on the skill base needed to do this job," says Sid Miner, president and CEO of Business Process Management Inc., the parent of a medical-claims processor.
Between 10,000 and 20,000 so-called claims-adjudication jobs have moved to other countries, Mr. Miner estimates, leaving about 300,000 of those jobs in the U.S.
外包大潮，无所不包？
谢丽尔?马塔(Sheryl Matta)现在的收入只有几年前的大约一半，她所在行业的就业市场似乎在每况愈下。她将这一切都归咎于外包。
马塔女士是一名医嘱转录员，她最近一次被调低收入是在1月份。当时一家在印度有外包业务的公司从她所在的位于马里兰州罗克维尔的公司手中抢走了一单合同，然后她被公司解雇。在苦苦寻觅一个月之后，她找到了另外一份为医师抄写医嘱的工作，该工作的劳动强度远胜以往－－新公司给她的报酬是每行字7美分，为了达到月收入2,000美元的目标，她不得不每天工作15个小时。
马塔说，"我不能再以此为生了。"现年54岁的马塔住在得克萨斯州的敖德萨。工作所需的两条电话线和互联网帐户每月就耗费大约190美元，她没钱为她吹奏圆号的16岁的女儿支付参加乐队夏令营的费用。"我们的工作被拿走了，这让我们无比愤怒。"
美国将工作输向低成本国家的潮流正波及到更多行业。在过去10年，美国公司将电脑编程和客户服务中心转移到受过良好教育的印度、菲律宾、墨西哥、加拿大等国家的工人手中。现在，包括会计和电子工程师等其他众多行业的从业人员开始发现，他们也未能幸免于这次外包浪潮。
Forrester Research Inc.的副总裁约翰?麦卡锡(John McCarthy)说，"当就业领域出现一些薪酬低但可以做同样工作的人时，你不可能没有后顾之忧。"他估计，到2005年，美国最多将有588,000个白领工作将被转移到海外－－到2010时这一数字将达到160万。截至今年2月底，美国就业总人数为1.383亿人。
印度全国软件和服务公司协会(National Association of Software and Service Companies)估计，自2000年以来，印度新增了300,000多个服务于海外客户的白领工作职位，美国公司在海外客户中占据了很大一席。
在某些行业，从理论上讲大多数职位都可以被转移到海外，比如家具和纺织公司，这些公司已经逐渐将生产转移到海外或进口外国制造产品。那些无需与客户进行面对面交流、即所谓的无固定办公场所的工作正面临著越来越大的风险。与信息密切相关的工作更是首当其冲，因为在当前，信息可以被很容易并且很便宜的转移到世界任何一个地方。 医嘱转录是指转录人员通过电子方式获取医师关于病例的录音纪录，然后将录音转成文字输入电脑，这项工作要求抄录员通晓医疗术语。全美医嘱转录协会(American Association for Medical Transcription)称，在美国，已经有10%的医嘱转录工作被转移到了印度、巴基斯坦、加拿大和其他国家。一些人更预计外包的比例达到了30%。根据美国劳工统计局(Bureau of Labor Statistics)的统计数字，美国2002年共有大约99,000名医疗转录人员。
全美医嘱转录协会职业关系董事卡利?博特曼(Carrie Boatman)称，"我们的许多会员都是单亲妈妈，她们将失去工作。"但是即使进行外包的公司也承认，外包工作的数量存在著限制。芝加哥的投资研究和咨询机构Pipal Research Corp.的首席执行长曼马诺耶?贾殷(Manoj Jain)说，地理和文化的差异使海外工人难以涉足高复杂性工作。Pipal Research在印度有50名持有博士或MBA学位的印度本土员工。
从事一些热门职业的海外工人的薪酬也突飞猛涨，这使得美国公司看中的成本节约效应大打折扣。贾殷最近为留住印度员工将他们的薪水提高了80%。他说，"海外薪酬与美国达到同一水平的时间可能早于人们的预期。"
美国一些受到严密监管的工作与外包相对隔绝。尽管放射学家也常被认为可能卷入外包潮流，但是美国联邦法律规定，为美国医院分析X射线的放射学家必须在美国接受培训和获得执照。位于爱达荷州科达伦市的NightHawk Radiology Services LLC的副总裁乔恩?贝格尔(Jon Berger)说，美国放射学科工作的流失"听起来耸人听闻，但这却是冰山一角。"NightHawk在澳大利亚有30名放射学家，他们全是美国人，年薪超过300,000美元，这与在美国的放射学家的薪水一致，但是悉尼办公室的放射学家能够在美国员工下班后的时间工作。
仍有许多工作职位有流失的风险，专家认为下面这些职位将会越来越多的流向海外：
--会计和税务人员。海外税务工作对许多会计师事务所来说特别具有吸引力，原因是在印度等国家有大量优秀的低薪酬会计师。外包公司Xpitax LLC首席执行长马克?埃尔布莱切特(Mark Albrecht)估计，今年有大约100,000宗返税将在海外处理，其中10,000宗由其在印度Chennai的75个税务专家处理。
一些外包公司预计一个会计行在印度每处理100宗返税能节约50,000美元。Xpitax从其他会计行接受电子税务信息，然后将之传输到一个印度会计师可以访问的互联网伺服器上。
迄今为止，美国纳税准备业务只有一小部分进行了外包，其中包括1.32亿宗个人返税（根据美国国税局(Internal Revenue Service)的估计数字）业务。但一些专家预计，那些在1至4月份税务忙季临时从事税务工作的美国工人可能最终将受到沉重打击。美国超过一半的个人返税是付费完成。
National Association of Tax Professionals in Appleton的发言人辛迪?荷肯贝瑞(Cindy Hockenberry)说，"外包可能会令整个行业的劳工消失，但是当前很难准确的说何时会发生这种情况。"
--技术写手。将复杂的技术概念和程序转变成非技术人员易懂的语言是一项可以远程完成的工作，因为这通常不需要与产品开发人员进行面对面的合作。这就导致一些公司转而借助于印度、俄罗斯、中国以及其他亚洲国家一些英语熟练的写手编写用户指南和纯技术性的产品手册。
美国一些技术写手已经发现他们的工资和工作机会大幅减少。39岁的自雇技术写手米切尔?戴维斯(Michele Davis)称，3年前她的收入为100,000美元，而2003年降至12,000美元。她认识的几个技术写手被迫接手一些零星的工作，每小时的收入大约为10美元，并且没有任何福利。
戴维斯说，我与一些工作职位被转移到韩国的人进行过交谈。她认为，她以前的客户一直在将编写工作向海外转移。她说，"在海外编写然后由美国的编辑修改成本很低。"
她的丈夫乔恩?飞利浦斯(Jon Phillips)是Emerson Electric Co.子公司的一个软件编程分析师，他被告知他的工作将在6个月后，即他完成一个新的数据库项目后，被转往海外。飞利浦斯的年薪为80,000美元，他预计印度同行的年薪为20,000美元。记者未能联系到Emerson的发言人对此发表评论。
--建筑师和绘图者。许多建筑行已经开始将绘图工作以及建设期间使用的法律文件的拟定工作输往海外。拥有750名雇员、在美国有8个办公室的建筑行SmithGroupCarl Roehling的总裁和首席执行长卡尔?罗伊灵(Carl Roehling)预计，当前大约有四分之一的大型建筑行将建筑文本工作转到了海外，更多公司在考虑这么做以保持竞争力。SmithGroup当前仅仅将海外项目的建筑文本工作转移到海外。
年轻的建筑师面临著最大的威胁。美国西岸一个从事公共建筑设计的公司的执行董事说，"我认为与6年前相比，雇佣初级雇员的必要性大大降低。"这家要求不透露名称的大型公司在过去几年中裁员10%，并使用海外绘图者绘制一些建筑图纸。
一些学生对此感到忧心忡忡，尤其是那些学习绘图的学生。乔伊丝?帕莱蒂尔(Joyce Pelletier)在Hudson Valley Community College学习电脑辅助制图，她说，外包可能导致学生就业机会大大减少。
--法律和投资研究。芝加哥的Mindcrest Inc.为公司和律师行提供法律研究服务，该公司在印度孟买拥有15名员工。Mindcrest的副总裁乔治?荷夫兰(George Hefferan)说，印度雇员主要从事一些通常由律师助手或初级律师负责的行政性工作，这些工作主要是文件搜寻以及搜索不同行业的法律规定。
尽管Mindcrest从事此类工作的外国雇员数量很少，但是其数量以每年翻一番的速度增长。如果包括那些在海外设立自有研究部门的公司，转移到海外的工作数量就比较可观了。
纽约法律杂志American Lawyer的首席编辑艾瑞克?普莱斯(Aric Press)补充说，"涉及商品的法律工作重复性很大，任何地方有才能的律师都可以完成。"
同时，纽约Fleetwood Research的总裁皮特?敏兹(Peter Mintz)说，尽管一些美国金融机构面临著整个行业的扩张机遇，但是新设的研究职位却减少。他说，"这些金融机构没有再大举进行招聘，相反，他们认为不必需要象以前那么多的雇员。"
--保险索赔处理。处理保险索赔需要收集索赔人的信息，然后根据保单决定赔付金额。这项工作在最近几年已经数字化，从而使得在海外从事这项工作成为可能。
保险业转移到海外的工作大多是一些相对简单的数据输入工作，但是保险公司正尝试著把合同审阅以及解决索赔要求等更复杂的工作转移出去。索赔处理公司Business Process Management Inc.的总裁兼首席执行长塞德?麦奈(Sid Miner)说，"从事这些工作所需的技能并非美国所独有。"
麦奈估计，有大约10,000至20,000个所谓的索赔裁定工作被从美国转移到了其他国家，现在美国还有300,000个这样的工作。
