New Study Doubles Number of Jobs Offshored in 2004

Michael Brightman is reminded daily that workers in New Delhi do the same job he does. His Indian counterparts routinely direct AT&T customers to him for long-distance billing problems that the New Delhi workers can’t answer.

Brightman and 139 others will be laid off Friday from AT&T’s call center on Massachusetts’ southeastern coast. AT&T said the workforce reduction resulted from a July decision to phase out residential long-distance service. “This work did not move. It went away,” said spokeswoman Tracey Belko. “We are not moving any of these jobs overseas.”

Brightman and coworkers picketing here last month don’t buy it. To them, jobs are being lost in the United States, while increasing overseas. Union officials said AT&T gave information on its offshore activity in January showing one in four AT&T customer calls was handled by independent U.S. contractors employing 1,400 workers overseas. In five years, AT&T has cut its national call-center employment by half, to 3,270, the union said. “Is it coincidental, or is it a shift?” Brightman asked about his layoff.

Data on numbers of U.S. jobs moving overseas in recent years are scattered and unreliable. As the AT&T example shows, jobs may be cut in the United States, and employment may increase overseas, but companies are reluctant to draw connections between the two, while unions are only too willing to do so. Groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce peg the number at perhaps 200,000 jobs a year. But a new report commissioned by a bipartisan congressional commission said 406,000 U.S. jobs will migrate overseas this year, double the conventional wisdom. This trend is expected to continue for several years as a greater variety of jobs are offshored, including to Latin America and the Caribbean.

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