The accepted notion that companies should seek to lower costs in the pursuit of higher profits has never generated more opposition than when the cost reduction involved offshore outsourcing of highly paid IT and other service industry jobs. Just whenthe furor over intercountry manufacturing and free trade has subsided a bit, a new cry has arisen over a more recent trend of offshoring service and knowledge intensive jobs. Perhaps the extent of the publicity given to the complaining is as much due tothe nature of the victims as to the political ramifications of this trend: "As long as the American jobs going offshore were blue-collar jobs, the political issue did not attain the heat it has now that white-collar job losses frighten a more articulate,assertive social class." (Will. 2004) In fact, "Forrester Research estimates that 3.3 million American white-collar jobs will leave the U.S. by 2015." (Tapper, 2004) Clearly, the United States w ill he not the only nation to feel the brunt of outsourcing; any country with a strong service economy will also feel the effects of this development.
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