Commentary

Anti-outsourcing bill-writing picks up speed

Think the anti-outsourcing hoopla would die down after the presidential election?

Just in the first three months of 2005, over 112 anti-outsourcing bills are coursing their way through some 40 states in the US. In 2004, there were 107 bills in 33 states, of which only five became law, says the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) in a new study.

It’s a good time to remember an often-overlooked point that Daniel Drezner highlighted in Foreign Affairs a while back:

Boston University Professor Nitin Joglekar has examined the effect of outsourcing on large financial firms and found that less than 20 percent of workers affected by outsourcing lose their jobs; the rest are repositioned within the firm.