Global Trade in Services: Fear, Facts, and Offshoring

How vulnerable are US workers to the effects of outsourcing? Are Americans going to lose jobs in areas like financial services, telecommunications, software development and engineering to low-salary countries like India and China? In a compelling new book J. Bradford Jensen demonstrates that the answer is no. He argues that the United States should embrace trade in services and aggressively pursue liberalization in the service sector. In fact, the United States and the world have much to gain and little to lose if trade in services is liberalized. Using the most current information on the services sector, Jensen shows that even though service sector jobs pay high wages, these jobs are not likely to be lost to lower-wage workers in other countries. Indeed, precisely because high-wage service sector jobs require highly skilled workers, the U.S. is likely to retain these jobs. Fear and Offshoring: The Facts on Global Services Outsourcing investigates the poorly understood phenomenon of services outsourcing and develops a comprehensive picture of its size, scope, and impact.