Off-Shoring: How Big Is It?

This report presents the results of the Panel’s research using publicly available industry-level data and confidential, firm-level (micro) data to address two critical questions: (1) What do currently available data indicate about the extent of U.S. services off-shoring? (2) What additional data are needed to provide a more complete assessment of U.S. services off-shoring?

Contrary to many popular perceptions, the Panel found that services off-shoring remains quite small among the multinational corporations and industries studied from 1998 to 2004. The Panel also found that U.S. businesses were much more likely to outsource services to other domestic firms during the same period, heightening the need to distinguish carefully between these two distinct and different economic concepts.