World Economics - The journal of current economic analysis and policy
Welcome 3 September 2010 Search
Article Overview
How Many US Jobs Might be Offshorable? Alan S. Blinder
Volume 10, Number 2, 2009, pages 41 - 78
Using detailed information on the nature of work done in over 800 US Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational codes, this paper ranks those occupations according to how easy/hard it is to offshore the work – either physically or electronically. Using this ranking, it is estimated that somewhere between 22% and 29% of all US jobs are or will be potentially offshorable within a decade or two. (No estimate is made of how many jobs will actually be offshored.) Since the rankings are subjective, two alternatives are presented – one is entirely objective, the other is an independent subjective ranking. In general, they corroborate the rankings, albeit not perfectly. It is found that there is little or no correlation between an occupation’s ‘offshorability’ and the skill level of its workers (as measured either by educational attainment or wages). However, it appears that, controlling for education, the most highly offshorable occupations were already paying significantly lower wages in 2004.




Not a subscriber? - Click here to subscribe to World Economics today.

FREE TRIAL
Sign up for a one week trial and view a sample issue now


FREE CONTENT ALERTS
To subscribe to our free 'Content Alerts' please fill in your details below:

First name:


Last name:


Email:

Copyright © 2010 Economic and Financial Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Home |  Site Map |  Terms of Use |  Privacy Policy