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Now IT's Personal: Offshoring and the Shifting Skill Composition of the U.S. Information Technology Workforce

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  • Prasanna Tambe

    (Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, New York 10012)

  • Lorin M. Hitt

    (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104)

Abstract
We combine new information technology (IT) offshoring and IT workforce microdata to investigate how the use of IT offshore captive centers is affecting the skill composition of the U.S. onshore IT workforce. The analysis is based on the theory that occupations involving tasks that are "tradable," such as tasks that require little personal communication or hands-on interaction with U.S.-based objects, are vulnerable to being moved offshore. Consistent with this theory, we find that firms that have offshore IT captive centers have 8% less of their onshore IT workforce involved in tradable occupations; those without offshore captive centers have increased the proportion of onshore employment in these same occupations by 3%. In addition, we find that hourly IT workers (e.g., IT contractors) are disproportionately employed in tradable jobs, and their onshore employment is 2%-3% lower in firms with offshore captive centers. These findings persist after considering different measures of employment composition, including controls for human capital, firm performance, domestic outsourcing, and whether firms choose to build or buy software. Instrumental variables and corroborating regressions suggest that our estimates are conservative--the magnitude of the effect generally rises after accounting for reverse causality and measurement error. This paper was accepted by by Chris Forman, guest department editor.

Suggested Citation

  • Prasanna Tambe & Lorin M. Hitt, 2012. "Now IT's Personal: Offshoring and the Shifting Skill Composition of the U.S. Information Technology Workforce," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(4), pages 678-695, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:58:y:2012:i:4:p:678-695
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1110.1445
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    3. Irfan Kanat & Yili Hong & T. S. Raghu, 2018. "Surviving in Global Online Labor Markets for IT Services: A Geo-Economic Analysis," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 29(4), pages 893-909, December.
    4. Ni Huang & Gordon Burtch & Yili Hong & Paul A. Pavlou, 2020. "Unemployment and Worker Participation in the Gig Economy: Evidence from an Online Labor Market," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 431-448, June.
    5. Christopher L. Erickson & Peter Norlander, 2022. "How the past of outsourcing and offshoring is the future of post‐pandemic remote work: A typology, a model and a review," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(1), pages 71-89, January.
    6. Thor Berger & Carl Benedikt Frey, 2016. "Structural Transformation in the OECD: Digitalisation, Deindustrialisation and the Future of Work," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 193, OECD Publishing.
    7. Goldfarb, Avi & Taska, Bledi & Teodoridis, Florenta, 2023. "Could machine learning be a general purpose technology? A comparison of emerging technologies using data from online job postings," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(1).
    8. Chris Forman & John Leslie King & Kalle Lyytinen, 2014. "Special Section Introduction—Information, Technology, and the Changing Nature of Work," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 25(4), pages 789-795, December.

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