Offshoring not hurting employment

Off-shoring IT services and call centres is not having a detrimental effect on UK employment according to official statistics.

Employment growth in call centre-related occupations in the UK has been nearly three times the overall growth in employment, according to an article in September's Labour Market Trends, published by the Office for National Statistics.

Imports and exports of services such as computing and 'other business services' (which includes call centres) show that the UK has a steady current account surplus in both sectors. In other words, it claims that the UK is gaining from the increasing trend in trade of IT-enabled services. It says that imports may have grown but exports have grown just as fast.

In spring 2005 UK employment in IT and call centre occupations stood at 1.05 million. It had grown by 8.8 per cent in the previous four years, compared with overall employment growth of 3.2 per cent. The article claims that the employment data by region for these occupations do not show any major variation from this trend, which suggests that the offshoring that has happened has had minimal effect on the employment prospects of IT-enabled occupations by region.

It continues that if the increasing use of offshoring by UK firms were having a negative impact, increasing redundancy levels might be expected. However, redundancies in these occupations have been falling since 2001, although they are higher than the national average.

A full copy of the report is available for download on the ONS website: Labour Market Trends - Offshoring