From today’s International Herald Tribune, "Coming to terms with the logic of outsourcing":

In the next decade, as many as 6 million U.S. jobs may be sent to India, Ireland, Israel and other nations by companies in search of lower costs and a tech-savvy, English-speaking work force, Goldman Sachs Group said in a September report.

Indian workers earn as little as one-tenth of what their American counterparts do, and India produces 67 percent more engineers and computer scientists each year than the U.S. does. The slowing growth of the U.S. work force may also push companies to accelerate the transfer of jobs.

"More and more companies know they need to go global, they just don't know how," he said. Those companies that do not try to expand overseas "are going to succumb to competitive pressures."

While outsourcing, as the migrating-jobs trend is called, benefits companies such as Microsoft and Texas Instruments, it has triggered a debate about whether the U.S. economy is better off. About 2.4 million jobs have been lost in the United States since President George W. Bush came to office in 2001.

"We used to think that displaced workers, given new training, could move up the value chain," the former U.S. trade representative, Charlene Barshefsky, said in an interview. "There is now a question about whether that upward movement will be possible."

Analysts say the shift of jobs overseas is one reason job creation has not matched economic growth, which rose at an 8.2 percent rate in the third quarter, this year.

"The idea that corporate America is stepping up and hiring again is ludicrous," Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley's chief economist, said in a Dec. 9 televised interview with Bloomberg News.

U.S. services hiring is virtually unchanged over the past 22 months, in contrast to a 5 percent gain in the six previous business cycles, Roach said. That means the U.S. is "in the hole" by 2 million service jobs, compared with a "normal" business cycle upturn, he estimates.