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"Unless the regulatory situation changes, I would be surprised if we didn't see some of that in the next five years," Brockmiller said. "I'd bet money on it."
Brockmiller said he doesn't know of any firm examples of white-collar jobs that have left the La Crosse area for other countries. The fact that wages in the area are lower than the national average probably is the main reason white-collar employers haven't sent jobs overseas, he said.
Jerry Hanoski, executive director of La Crosse-based Workforce Connections Inc., said he thinks offshoring of jobs has happened less in western Wisconsin than elsewhere in the nation.
"It's kind of a tough thing to get a handle on," said Hanoski, whose agency assists job seekers and employers. "I think it's usually held pretty close to the vest. I suspect it's a public relations issue. And it involves proprietary business practices."
Brockmiller cited a report this month by Forrester Research Inc., which estimated 830,000 U.S. service-sector jobs — ranging from telemarketers and accountants to software engineers and chief technology officers — will move abroad by the end of 2005.
The firm, based in Cambridge, Mass., projected in 2002 that 588,000 jobs would move overseas by the end of next year.
Forrester this month also increased its long-term job loss prediction, estimating that
3.4 million jobs will leave the United States by 2015. The company originally predicted long-term job loss of 3.3 million positions — a figure that members and Congress and labor activists said was cause for great alarm. Researchers said the short-term losses surged as companies began experimenting, but the long-term numbers likely will be moderate.
Lead researcher John C. McCarthy said widespread publicity over the cost savings associated with offshoring — increasingly a topic of partisan debate in the presidential campaign — might have hastened the trend. The average computer programmer in India is paid roughly $10 per hour, compared with more than $60 per hour for the average American.
Executives in the financial services and technology industries have embraced the trend. Tech hubs such as Silicon Valley and Seattle have higher unemployment than the nation at large.
But the Forrester report says a new wave of white-collar offshoring among manufacturing companies — automobile parts suppliers and agribusinesses, for example — will bring the trend to other parts of the country, particularly the Midwest.
The AP contributed to this story.
