Service-Providing Occupations, Offshoring, and the Labor Market: A BLS Analysis Identifies 160 Service-Providing Occupations That Are Susceptible to Offshoring; These Occupations Are Diverse in Their Job Functions, Associated Educational Attainment, and Wages

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) researches trends affecting the labor market as part of its Employment Projections Program. Although the BLS examines all factors affecting employment in industries and occupations, it pays particular attention to new or emerging topics. One such topic is the offshoring of serviceproviding occupations.1 In recent years, special efforts have been made to identify the occupations that may be susceptible to offshoring and to account for offshoring in occupational employment projections. This article, representing the culmination of those efforts, identifies 160 occupations considered susceptible to offshoring and reports trends in historical and projected data for those occupations. For most of recorded history, the majority of goods and services were produced and consumed locally. Developments in transportation—most notably, the locomotive and steamship and, later, the airplane and truck—made the large-scale remote production of goods practical. The result was a rapid increase in the trade of goods, causing manufacturers to face competition from abroad. Recent advances in telecommunications—in particular, the Internet—have enabled information to travel around the globe nearly instantaneously. Consequently, many Roger J. Moncarz, Michael G. Wolf, and Benjamin Wright