San Francisco -- Offshoring is just one of many global forces impacting job creation and destruction in the Bay Area and cannot be viewed in isolation from the key trends enabling it, such as globalization, technology-driven improvements in productivity and business disintermediation. Efforts to prevent offshoring will not be successful and are likely to come at considerable economic cost, according to a new study released today.

Sponsored by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, the Bay Area Economic Forum and the Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE), with research and project support from global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, the study analyzed global trends, regional capabilities and the Bay Area job market.

Findings from the study, the first regionally focused on the Bay Area, were based on 120 interviews, analysis of 9,000 job listings and other primary and secondary research.

The Bay Area already has more experience with globalization and offshoring than other parts of the U.S., the study reports. Bay Area manufacturers earn almost 60 percent of their revenues in overseas markets. Analysis done as part of the study revealed 94 percent of companies in the semiconductor and semiconductor equipment manufacturing and software clusters - two driving sectors in the Bay Area in terms of employment and payroll contribution - are already using offshore resources.

This does not mean all jobs are going offshore. The study also found one-in-four job postings for large companies in those sectors during April 2004 was for positions in the Bay Area.

"The research makes clear that global trends will force continued creation and destruction of jobs in the Bay Area. These trends can't be reversed. Policies and investment should be directed toward helping the region strengthen its core capabilities to compete effectively on a national and global basis" said Sean Randolph, President & CEO of the Bay Area Economic Forum.

The study calls for policymakers to maintain strong support for basic research, invest in education to ensure a competitive local workforce and to address vulnerabilities in the regional business environment including housing, transportation and business regulations that hinder local job creation. Business leaders need to support transition programs and consider investment in local employee development to meet their future job needs.

The study found the Bay Area is losing ground to other regions in the U.S. and overseas in three competitive capabilities: mass production, back-office (transactional) operations and product and process enhancement. The competitive erosion in the latter is new. It appears that the Bay Area is rapidly losing out to other regions in occupations associated with engineering focused on cost reduction, fine-tuning processes and expanding product features. These engineering jobs, along with manufacturing and administration-related occupations, are expected to decline as the skills required for those functions are sourced more cost effectively in other regions of the United States and abroad.

The study also identified five competitive capabilities that investors and business leaders believe are key strengths of the Bay Area. In addition to three capabilities traditionally linked to the region (entrepreneurship/new business creation, research in advanced technologies and bringing new concepts to market), the analysis pointed to two other competitive capabilities not always in the spotlight:

• Cross-disciplinary research - coordinating and integrating advanced learning across industries and scientific disciplines.
• Global integrated management - managing and coordinating globally distributed business functions and networks.

Jobs aligned with these five regional strengths, such as high-level research, strategic marketing and global business and headquarter management activities, are expected to experience solid growth.

"The findings confirm that the region should continue to attract talent and foster innovation, start-up activity and job creation, as technology companies are launched and commercialized," said Russell Hancock, President and CEO of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network.

The Bay Area's strengths make the region a leader in job creation in early stages of the business lifecycle, but its weaknesses lead to job growth outside the region in the later stages. As a result, the study says, the Bay Area will continue to incubate and develop new businesses, a process that has historically been the core growth engine for the local job market.

"Companies founded in the Bay Area will typically maintain the majority of their workforce in the region until their first products or services gain market traction and key business processes stabilize," said John Ciacchella, Vice President with A.T. Kearney. "However, as these companies expand and mature, many of the new jobs that stay local will focus on management of expanding business operations that are outsourced, offshored and distributed to other regions."

The Bay Area also is well positioned in the industries likely to spawn new technology

start-ups, according to the study's job market analysis and interviews. Beyond its leading role in information technology, the Bay Area has the highest concentration of biotechnology firms in the country and more nanotechnology firms than all countries except Germany.

"How jobs in a region are affected by global trends depends on the competitiveness of the region's capabilities," said Marguerite Gong Hancock, Associate Director of SPRIE. "Despite a rise in the capabilities of other entrepreneurial regions globally, the Bay Area continues to lead in many of the capabilities considered most necessary for innovation and new business creation"

The study findings will be presented at a public event on Thursday, July 15, at Stanford University, where a panel of business and community leaders will discuss the report's findings and implications and take questions from the audience. The panel will be moderated by Paul Laudicina, managing director of A.T. Kearney's Global Business Policy Council, and includes:

• Edward Barnholt (Chairman, President & CEO, Agilent Technologies)
• William T. Coleman (Founder, Chairman & CEO, Cassatt Corporation, and Vice Chairman, Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group)
• Anula K. Jayasuriya (Venture Partner, ATP Capital LP)
• William F. Miller (Professor Emeritus, Stanford Graduate School of Business)
• The Honorable Joe Nation, California State Assembly

BAY AREA ECONOMIC FORUM
Bay Area Economic Forum (www.bayeconfor.org) is a public-private partnership of senior business, government, university, labor and community leaders, develops and implements projects that: support the vitality and competitiveness of the regional economy, and enhance the quality of life of the regions residents. Sponsored by the Bay Area Council a business organization of more than 250 CEOs and major employers, and the Association of Bay Area Governments, representing the region's 101 cities and nine counties, the Bay Area Economic Forum provides a shared platform for leaders to act on key issues affecting the regional economy.

JOINT VENTURE: SILICON VALLEY NETWORK
Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network (www.jointventure.org) is a nonprofit organization that provides analysis and action on issues affecting the economy and quality of life in Silicon Valley. The organization brings together new and established leaders from business, labor, government, education, non-profits, and the broader community to build a sustainable region that is poised for competition in the global economy.

STANFORD PROJECT ON REGIONS OF INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
The Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (http://sprie.stanford.edu), or SPRIE, is dedicated to the understanding and practice of the nexus of innovation and entrepreneurship in the leading regions around the world. Current research focuses on Silicon Valley and high technology regions in 6 countries in Asia: People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore and India. SPRIE fulfills its mission through interdisciplinary and international collaborative research, seminars and conferences, publications and briefings for industry and government leaders.

A $2 million gift honoring Professor William J. Perry, from telecommunications entrepreneur Jeong H. Kim, will create a new professorship on contemporary Korea to be established jointly by the Stanford Institute for International Studies (SIIS) and the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Perry, the 19th secretary of defense of the United States, currently holds the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professorship and is a senior fellow at SIIS. Upon Perry's retirement from Stanford the new Korea chair will be named the William J. Perry Professorship.

"Bill Perry's dedicated work on Korean issues over the last decade and the significant contributions he has made to this very crucial dialogue are unparalleled," said Kim, a member of the SIIS Board of Visitors. "I can think of no one more appropriate than Bill for this chair to be named after."

Kim's interest in the political and cultural life of his native Korea has been sustained over the years in part by following the work of his mentor and friend, Bill Perry, who has played a significant role in encouraging Kim's entrepreneurship.

Learning of Kim's gift, Perry said, "I am pleased that so many students will benefit from this generous gift. I am quite humbled that Jeong and Cindy Kim have chosen to honor me in this way, as Jeong's own accomplishments deserve to be acknowledged and, indeed, emulated."

As Perry related, "Jeong Kim's story is as impressive as it is inspiring. He left Korea at the age of 14 and made his way to America with no money and little English. He worked his way through high school and college, and became a nuclear engineering officer in the U.S. Navy. After leaving the navy, he returned to school, earned his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, and started an innovative new company in the highly competitive telecom business. Within five years he took his very successful company public and sold it to Lucent Technologies for $1 billion. He went on to manage a major division for Lucent, until offered a professorship at the University of Maryland. His dedication to education is clearly evident, not only by his decision to teach future leaders, but through his endowments of a new engineering building at the University of Maryland and now this chair in Korean studies at Stanford. And all before he turned 45."

"I understand that the university is at a critical juncture in the development of Korean Studies at Stanford," said Kim. "I am delighted to be able to do something meaningful to encourage its growth."

The establishment of an incremental endowed faculty position to be held jointly by both SIIS and the School of Humanities and Sciences is unique and innovative for Stanford University and is a likely precursor to further joint appointments that may characterize the university's upcoming multidisciplinary initiatives.

"Jeong Kim's gift is a momentous tribute to Bill Perry. It also presents a perfect opportunity for the Institute and H&S to work cooperatively to further strengthen Korean Studies at Stanford, which has been growing impressively under the leadership of Program Director Professor Gi-Wook Shin," said SIIS Director Coit D. Blacker.

H&S Dean Sharon Long concurred, "I am so pleased that Dr. Kim has extended such a generous recognition of one of the university's most valued faculty members. This gift will contribute to the growth of our understanding of Korea, a subject of deep concern to our donor and to our faculty and students."

William J. Perry has worked inside and outside of government over the last decade toward a resolution of what he has often called the "dangerous armed truce" on the Korean peninsula. Having served as secretary of defense during the 1994 crisis on the Korean peninsula, he has often said that the United States was closer to war there during that period than at any other time during his tenure.

During the second term of the Clinton administration, Perry served as special advisor to the president and the secretary of state for the review of the United States policy toward North Korea. He continues his efforts for peace on the Korean Peninsula at SIIS and as co-director of the Preventive Defense Project, a research collaboration between Stanford and Harvard.

Korea's leading companies, Pantech Co., Ltd., and Curitel Communications, Inc. (known as the Pantech Group) have awarded a $2 million gift to support the Korean Studies Program at the Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), within the Stanford Institute for International Studies.

The Pantech gift will create the Stanford Korea Forum, led by Professor Gi-Wook Shin, which will convene a conference every year on different aspects of the U.S.-Korea relationship. Three fellowships will also be established: one for mid-career professionals in public service, journalism, and business who will spend three to nine months at Stanford as Pantech Fellows; one for invited Korean scholars to come to Stanford during the summer; and a third for undergraduate and graduate students interested in Korean studies. In addition, the gift will help to sustain critical activities of the Korean Studies Program in APARC, such as public lectures, ongoing research, and policy briefs.

Under the leadership of Byeong Yeop Park, the Founder and Chairman, the Pantech Group had combined sales of 14 million sets worldwide, with a total gross revenue of U.S. $1.7 billion in 2003, placing them in the top three mobile handset manufacturers in Korea, and the eighth largest in the global market.

The Korean government has recognized Mr. Park's achievements with numerous awards. His strong investment in R&D and his recruitment of top technological talent have led to steady and sustainable profits for Pantech, and the company has a record of supporting broad social programs in local communities.

Regarding the company's commitment to Stanford, Mr. Park said, "I am extremely pleased to be part of this outstanding and unique program on Korean Studies. I recognize Stanford's contribution to promoting mutual understanding between Korea and the U.S. by bringing together prominent scholars, policymakers, and business leaders of both countries. I'm so proud that Pantech Group will be contributing to developing the next generation of leaders in building the relationship between Korea and the United States. I hope that our pledge will help attract to Stanford some of the brightest young minds of our two countries."

Professor Shin was delighted about the generous Pantech gift. Korean Studies have blossomed at Stanford over the past three years under Shin's leadership, and he notes that this new commitment will "facilitate American understanding of Korea and elevate Stanford's Korean studies program to the next level of excellence." Shin also underscored the importance of the timing of this gift, "as the United States is now entering a new era in its relations with both North and South Korea."

The Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is a unique Stanford University institution focused on the study of contemporary Asia. APARC's mission is to produce and publish Asia Pacific-focused interdisciplinary research; to educate students, scholars, and corporate and governmental affiliates about the importance of U.S.-Asian relations; to promote constructive interaction to understand and resolve the region's challenges; to influence U.S. policy toward the Asia-Pacific; and to guide Asian nations on key foreign relations, government, political economy, technology, and social issues. APARC is part of the Stanford Institute for International Studies.

In Silicon Valley 200,000 workers have lost their jobs since 2001, albeit only 6,000 of those jobs headed overseas, Stanford University researcher Rafiq Dossani estimates. But that number will grow, he says, as the offshoring pace accelerates for jobs in software programming and product development. Already 150,000 engineers hack away in Bangalore--20,000 more than in Silicon Valley, the Times of India reports. Cisco used only a few Infosys workers in Bangalore six years ago; now it uses almost 300 contract staff, plus 550 full-fledged employees in its own Bangalore office. In two years PeopleSoft's Bangalore offshore force has grown to 200 freelancers and 350 full-timers.

President George W. Bush has selected APARC director emeritus Henry S. Rowen as one of the two final members of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, according to a Feb. 14 announcement by the White House.

In addition to being the director emeritus of the Asia-Pacific Research Center, Rowen is co-director of the Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE), and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for International Studies. He was appointed a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution in 1983. He is the Edward B. Rust Professor of Public Policy and Management, emeritus, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He served as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 1989 to 1991, chairman of the U.S. Intelligence Council from 1981 to 1983, and deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 1961 to 1964.

Charles M. Vest, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the other final commission member announced by the White House.

Silicon Valley cannot be replicated-not even in the US, leave alone India.

But there is no underestimating the complex and high end nature of information technology work that's increasingly being done in India.

There is almost nothing that is not doable, except certain high investment, high value manufacturing, like microprocessors.

This year stands out for the speed with which India, still very much a poverty ridden developing country, has emerged as a partner of mature econom-ies in a wide ranging field that covers information technology, business processes and research and development.

Unsurprisingly, such a major development has been accompanied by drama, excitement, anguish and misunderstanding. The rapid acceleration in trends, which in some cases date back to over 10 years, has given little time to players on both sides to rationally assess and adjust to new realities.

Some don't seem to know what has hit them and have therefore gone on to make unrealistic assumptions.

In the west, particularly in the US, there is a backlash against outsourcing to countries like India, China, the Philippines and Russia, with India being the most visible and so taking most of the rap.

Correspondingly, there is an element of euphoria in India in the belief that it has arrived. Some are making unrealistic assumptions that it is on the way to becoming a new Silicon Valley to the world.

Significantly, the knowledgeable and those who are in the vortex of change have a realistic view of what exists on the ground and an enlightened foresight of the shape of things to come.

In this survey of opinion leaders in the information technology industry, we try to come to grips with the new, rapidly emerging reality what is the exact nature of the high tech work taking place in India in information technology and what are the precise contours of the emerging cross border partnerships?

First, the Silicon Valley red herring. Sridhar Mitta, managing director of the incubating firm e4e Labs, almost snorts at the mention of Silicon Valley.

He recalls how the good professors at Stanford University started to get too many visitors who came and asked the same questions what makes Silicon Valley tick and can we replicate it in our country?

They undertook a methodical study for a couple of years and helped define the uniqueness of the creative process that occurs in a small geography 30 miles by 10 miles, near the Californian city of San Francisco.

To Mitta, the Valley's defining characteristic is that some of the best brains in the world are concentrated in a small geography. "It is an innovative high tech cluster. There is an ecosystem of companies which add value to each other."

In Silicon Valley people are willing to share ideas and are not worried about theft. Business discussions are concluded very fast as people want to get on with a project. A project can be started in a week.

There is no concern over individual ideas being stolen as it is assumed that if you are bright you will have many more worthwhile ideas. In the Valley, people don't care about religion, creed or nationality. "There is only one religion, business," Mitta says.

Another industry insider concurs. "Silicon Valley is not a service, but a risk taking model, whereas the Indian software model is largely based on cost effective and efficient delivery of services," he differentiates.

Many of tomorrow's problems are first defined in US universities and then get crystalised as business opportunities. "Firms in the Valley work closely with those universities to quickly grasp the business ideas that emerge from diagnosing and solving a technical problem, for example."

Where does Indian expertise and capability stand then? "The Indian environment still lacks the original ideas that create the new business models. This is because of the lack of proximity to markets," the industry insider explains.

"Once an engineering problem is defined, it can be executed in India." The key and growing Indian competency now is that it has crossed the technical hurdle, there is little that cannot be technically done in India.

If Silicon Valley scores 100 for the purpose of our present discussion, Mitta gives Bangalore 15.

"Bangalore has passed criticality in technical prowess but is still abysmally low in interaction. The culture of networking is better in Bangalore than in the rest of India but nowhere near what exists in the Valley. Here a major part of the load is carried by multinationals which guard their secrets very jealously," Mitta says.

Bangalore also scores on its educational institutions which can deliver the raw materials or skills. Like the Valley, it has some of the best brains, relatively speaking, and some companies have reached criticality of size. Some complex work gets done here in a serial way within companies.

"I know that a US company can start a complex work group here which involves doing many things, though not all. But I don't know what the company on the floor above mine is doing," notes Mitta.

Subroto Bagchi, COO of MindTree Consulting, who is based in the US, explains that in the 1990s people thought that any work that required a high degree of customer knowledge and collaboration, design and architecting had to be done exclusively in the US.

"Anything that required innovation had to be done near the water cooler. So now there is hardware, software and wetware the coffee machine and what's between your two ears, as most of the human brain is water."

But the big change has come with the availability of high bandwidth which has made the water cooler virtual.

"If earlier we looked at India for just development or maintenance work, now we are able to look at co-development and co-architecting," Bagchi notes.

Till two human beings meet, trust is not established. Innovation-related activity, co-development and co-architecting are not done by two entities but by two human beings.

Two techies have to accept each other as "buddies" before they can innovate together. "That happened after Y2K. It established the cross cultural comfort. In a nutshell, India has become legitimate," Bagchi adds.

Higher value add projects are now coming to India and company boards across the world are increasingly being asked, 'What is your India strategy?' Investors in venture capital funds are asking them, 'What are your plans for India,' and they in turn are asking companies 'What are your India development plans?'

The software insider says India's current role is to "complement" not "replace" Silicon Valley. "If present trends continue, maybe India can equal Silicon Valley in seven to 10 years. But the approach cannot be 'We versus they.'"

Another authority adds his support to this scenario, making a deft distinction between what is on and not on.

Says Madhukar Angur, David M French distinguished professor at the Flint School of Management, University of Michigan: "Today almost nothing is too high-tech for India. In technology (IT, designing, R&D) India has taken significant strides. It is pretty close to self-sustaining growth. But it is not quite there. So MNCs will look at India as a location for startups but not standalone ones."

So they will also seek out partners, as Intel has done with startups like Tejas Networks.

The cooperation and joint development approach is underlined by K P Balaraj, managing director of WestBridge Capital Partners.

He feels that "the vast majority of the work being done by start-ups in India is led by teams located in the Valley. What is changing though is the timing of an India ODC (overseas development centre) which is being set up much earlier in the life cycle or even at the seed stage."

What is more significant is that as multinationals which follow the example of early leaders such as GE, TI, Intel, Oracle and others start to do more cutting edge work here, there will be a large base of India-based engineers and managers who will have the experience of building and bringing a world-class product to global markets, primarily the US.

"From this base, we will see a future generation of product entrepreneurs emerge who will have the vision and market credibility to attract high quality VC funding for their plans," Balaraj adds.

Innovation means developing new technology or products. Product development in India is already taking place but as a secondary exercise.

Sanjay Kalra, CEO of the HCL-Deutsche Bank joint venture DSL Software, explains the sequence of what came first and then what followed. At any point of time more than 70 percent of spending takes place on sustaining investments in existing technologies.

This, like work on new technologies, also requires high end work that is innovative. But a majority of the effort is in tasks that are process and procedure bound.

In such tasks, innovation is focused on how to deliver the subcontracted tasks better (process improvement, quality).

High end startups are now beginning to allocate and locate a high percentage of employees (or contractors) in India.

In the past it was the large technology players that leveraged the lower costs and high availability of talent. The smaller startups would contract to small and large players on a need basis.

But of late a lot of smaller startups are also beginning to factor in India as an integral part of their business plans right from the beginning.

What is more, several start-ups are now using India as the base to also conceptualise and then produce in India for markets in Asia.

The good news on products is that Intel is in India in a big way and is going in for the joint effort startups that hold the key to the future. Intel's own agenda, says Ketan Sampat, president of Intel India, is to establish leading edge design capability.

Says Sampat: "At Intel's development centre (its largest non-manufacturing site outside the US), we are engaged in some of the most advanced development activities not just in India but anywhere in the world. For example, the flagship next-generation enterprise processor that Intel will have in volume production is being designed entirely in Bangalore."

But he sees an important milestone that has to be crossed Indian firms still have not broken into the ranks of product companies with their own intellectual property and branded product lines.

"The i-flex's of the world are still too few and far between," Sampat says. So Intel Capital, the company's strategic investment programme, has been an investor in several Indian technology companies. Sampat mentions the investment in Sasken Technologies.

"Its product GSM/ GPRS software stacks complements our "Manitoba" (wireless Internet on a chip) product and it has customers worldwide."

He also mentions another telecom company, Tejas Networks. "It is starting with the Indian market which is sizeable now and is using it as a springboard to the global market."

Sanjay Nayak, CEO, Tejas Networks, sees only the beginnings of high end startups in India, like his company. "It will take some time before we see a major shift in startups originating in India, though the enablers are all there."

The most common trend is to have an "engineering backend" in India of a US originating startup. Within this, the major amount of work that is being done is "software" centric not much system design or hardware design work is done.

He expects that "once we have a few success stories of high-end product companies from India, it will accelerate the trend." In the past, countries like Israel and Taiwan have witnessed such trends.

Srini Rajam, chairman and CEO of Ittiam, another startup product company, sees high end start ups becoming increasingly dependent on designs done in India.

"There is a strong push coming from the investors of the start ups to locate a large part of their design team in India or source their key designs/IP from Indian companies, in order to improve R&D budget utilisation and time-to-market."

He sees early revival worldwide in one segment-the semiconductor and embedded systems. "This is in turn is enabling the growth of chip design, embedded software and system design activities in India."

Several factors are likely to encourage more high end work to come to India and help it become an increasingly important partner of Silicon Valley.

First, the reverse brain drain or brain gain that has been taking place in the last few years, especially since the tech bubble burst in early 2000 and the recession that set in in Silicon Valley.

One person who has been plotting it carefully is Rafiq Dossani, a senior research scholar at the Asia-Pacific Research Centre of Stanford University.

"My guess is that 6,000 jobs have been lost from Silicon Valley in IT to India. Looking ahead, the flow will depend on both opportunities in India and here."

The Silicon Valley economy is picking up rapidly and hiring should soon increase, feels Dossani. In addition, it remains unbeatable on new product development because of its global reach of talent and proximity to markets.

So the younger and more innovative will be attracted to the Valley. India will continue to attract those in the 30-40 age group interested in raising families in India and those interested in a rapid rise up the executive ladder through a stint at a senior level in India.

Also, a key security factor is enabling high end work to shift to India, argues Angur. India will be a country of choice for location of partnerships on considerations of economic stability.

"Multinationals gamble on technology but are cautious on geography. Even China and Taiwan have a security downside. India-Pakistan relations is indeed perceived as a security risk but still India is on the preferred US list."

He sees a significant historical parallel. Technology and IT will be to India what the automobiles industry was to the US.

"One out of every three in the US has something to do with automobiles. The IT revolution has the seeds of becoming something like that. In the immediate future mutlinationals will consider India more and more for high-tech startups and there will be more high tech jobs."

Bagchi shares a deeper insight rooted in Indian history and social development. India, he feels, has two cards up her sleeve: "One is the power of diversity and two the power of pluralism, imparted to it by its institutions."

The future of the global economy is in more trade but post 9/11, the west is also looking for a sense of comfort a degree of security and cultural fit.

How many countries are there with world class capability in IT services from which an American company can source? Out of the choices available, how many countries are both diverse, so that there is a democratic-cultural fit, and believe in institutional pluralism - executive, judiciary, legislative system? "These institutions give a guarantee of continuity," he says.

To become an innovation partner to Silicon Valley, an economy must innovate. Innovation is invariably linked to diversity. The US has been at the cutting edge of technologies because it has such a pro-immigration policy.

"We did IT services for 15 years and moved up the value chain. But the next big value chain is about innovation. That innovation depends on the fertility condition on the ground. That condition is necessarily about diversity," Bagchi adds.

With the next round of presidential primary elections coming up Tuesday, billboards are popping up across South Carolina with a political message that might resonate with any Democratic contender: "Lost your job to free trade and offshoring yet?"

The issue of employment is high on the agenda in this political season. President Bush can take credit for an economic recovery, but he is vulnerable when it comes to jobs. The stock market is up, but job growth is dismal -- only 1,000 jobs were created in December, a fraction of the 300,000 new jobs the Bush administration projected.

As the temperature rises over disappointing job growth, the practice of "offshoring" -- sending jobs overseas to cheap labor markets -- has worked its way into the rhetoric of the presidential campaign trail.

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic front-runner after victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, has been denouncing the Bush administration for rewarding "Benedict Arnold CEOs" who move "profits and jobs overseas." Howard Dean, the populist former governor of Vermont, has told his audiences that America needs a president "who doesn't think that big corporations who get tax cuts ought to be able to move their headquarters to Bermuda and their jobs offshore."

Significance unknown

There's no consensus among economists and experts over the long-term significance of the trend toward offshoring, jargon that combines the words "offshore" and "outsourcing." It generally refers to the export of white-collar jobs in information technology and other professional fields such as accounting and banking services.

But blue-collar workers have borne the brunt of the pain. South Carolina, a key battleground state for the Democrats, has been hit hard by overseas outsourcing in the textile industry, and has lost about 64,000 manufacturing jobs over the past three years, according to the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, the Washington-based lobbying group that paid for the billboard ads.

Offshoring statistics are fuzzy at best. One report estimates that 300,000 of the 2.4 million jobs lost since the beginning of the recession in 2001 can be attributed to offshoring. Future projections are all over the map: One predicts 3.3 million service-sector jobs will go overseas in the next 15 years, while a University of California-Berkeley report estimated 14 million U.S. service jobs are at risk.

"I think the issue is going to be exaggerated and manipulated by both sides in the political debate," said Dean Davison, an analyst at the Meta Group, a technology research and advisory firm in Stamford, Conn. "There are distinct differences of opinion in what corporations should do to take responsibility, and what kind of public policy should be implemented."

Legislation has been introduced in Congress to address the issue, some of it intended to stir up debate rather than win passage. Kerry introduced a bill in November that would require call-center operators to disclose their physical location to consumers who phone in for customer service or technical help, ostensibly to discourage U.S. companies from moving such jobs overseas.

On the other end of the ideological spectrum, Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., won passage for his amendment to the Senate's omnibus appropriations bill last week that bans some federal contracts to vendors using offshore labor. News of this caused a furor over the weekend in the New Delhi press, on the assumption the lucrative Indian industry in back-office contracting operations was threatened by congressional sanctions. But that was a false alarm.

Few firms affected

The ban applies only to a relatively small number of U.S. companies bidding for contracts under a Bush administration program to privatize certain federal government services, such as architectural design work, explained John Palatiello, a Washington-based lobbyist representing domestic companies bidding for privatization contracts. The strategy, he said, was to prevent federal unions from claiming their jobs were being sent overseas.

"The motivation wasn't to stop offshoring per se," Palatiello said, "but rather to get it out of the debate on privatizing federal services."

Antipathy to offshoring has deep political roots. Manufacturers in the toy and apparel industries have gone overseas for decades to produce their goods from contractors using cheap labor. Gradually, electronics makers and Silicon Valley's computer brands all followed -- and more recently software and professional services.

Presidential wannabe Ross Perot immortalized this inexorable force of globalization as the "giant sucking sound" from Mexico when he campaigned against the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1992 election. Twelve years later, many of those Mexican manufacturing jobs have moved to China.

The fuss over job loss in this presidential election year is of particular concern in India, the nation that is benefiting most from the offshoring boom. A Jan. 19 article in the Times of India, headlined "Why is the U.S. running scared?" captured the dismay: "The issue has become a political hot potato. It has even entered the presidential debate, with Democrat Howard Dean attacking his rival contender Wesley Clark for being soft on it. Why the big hoopla over outsourcing?"

Rafiq Dossani, a consulting professor at Stanford University's Asia-Pacific Research Center, published a study of companies moving operations to India last year. He is a proponent of the business efficiencies of offshore labor markets. But even he is concerned about the long-term political consequences.

"This may be a problem in the minds of some politicians now, even before there's been sufficient analysis of what is going on," said Dossani, a New Delhi native. "But I think over the next five years this is going to have a huge impact. The range of jobs that can be offshored is mind-boggling."