There are
a number of technology jobs and job areas that will not be coming back to the United States anytime soon, according to a
study by global consultancy The Hackett Group.
Between
2010 and 2014, nearly 2 million back-office IT jobs in infrastructure services,
help desk and data centers are expected to be lost. Many of these jobs will go
offshore, a trend that has been exacerbated by the economic pressures of the
2009 recession. Miami-based Hackett estimates that nearly 300,000 of these
types of IT jobs have been eliminated in 2009.
"There
are some companies that are exploring the use of home-based employees for this,
or who are trying to take advantage of low-cost labor markets in the U.S.," said Hackett Global IT
Practice Leader Honorio Padron to eWEEK. "But it’s very tough to compete
with the labor rates in the Philippines or elsewhere."
It's not
only IT that is feeling the pressure. Roughly 330,000 finance, human resources,
procurement and administrative jobs were eliminated in 2009, estimates Hackett
in its study of 4,000 global companies with a minimum annual revenue of $1
billion. Looking longer term, close to 1.6 million general and administrative
(G&A) jobs will be eliminated or moved offshore.
Yet, there's
no denying that U.S.-based back-office IT jobs are some of the hardest hit of
the lot. Outsourcing to Asian countries in Singapore, China, India and the Philippines is expected to expand.
"Another
factor is standardization, which is driving the rationalization of IT services.
Companies are realizing they don’t need 24 help desks and 10 data
centers," said Padron to eWEEK. "And as they consolidate, they’re
likely to close domestic facilities and expand facilities they might have in
places like Singapore."
Software
and application development has its share of U.S.-job loss risk, warns
Hackett's Padron:
"As
companies focus on application rationalization, people who develop and maintain
software are also at risk here. There’s a real acceleration in companies’ move
to decommission existing applications and consolidate applications with similar
functions."
Despite
the large number of back-office job eliminations for the foreseeable future,
there are a host of IT jobs that will stay stateside.
"Positions
that focus on strategy, architecture, project management and relationship
management are safer because you want someone doing that work who is plugged
into the company and can act as the representative to the CIO," said Padron.
"Performance management roles are also in that category to some extent.”
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