Millions of European IT jobs likely to be off-shored, finds report
Europe could lose up to 1.2 million information technology (IT) and service jobs within the next ten years as firms move to India and elsewhere, with the UK being the country most affected by this trend, finds a new report. According to the report by analysts Forrester Research, 56,000 British workers will lose their jobs to non-European countries this year, rising to 760,000 by 2015. This means that by 2015, a total of three per cent of all UK jobs will have moved overseas. The report, 'Two-speed Europe: Why one million jobs will move offshore', predicts that more than 150,000 technology related jobs will be off-shored by 2015 with a further 100,000 IT related clerical jobs, such as data inputting, moved to countries with highly skilled, cheap labour pools. Analysts say UK businesses will benefit most by leading the off-shoring trend, outsourcing a similar level of its IT and business functions as the US, with Germany and France missing out on low costs and skilled workforces by delaying until 2007. 'It is not the loss of jobs that will have most impact, but the lost competitiveness for offshore shy companies from Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands,' says Andrew Parker, research director at Forrester Research. 'Laggards who fail to exploit the offshore opportunity risk loosing out in terms of profitability, particularly in the finance, auto manufacturing and aerospace industries,' he added. Forrester Research shows that offshore services spending in the EU will grow from 1.1 billion euro in 2004 to more than 3.6 billion euro in 2009 - at a compound annual growth rate of 27 per cent. The UK will drive 69 per cent of that spending this year and command 76 per cent of the spending offshore by 2009. Germany, France and Italy are each expected to lose about 140,000 jobs by 2015. It is India that dominates the supply side of the European offshore services equation - taking around 80 per cent of the total spending throughout the forecast period. In some countries, including France and Germany, firms will remain offshore shy mainly because of communication, cultural, and geopolitical barriers. However, according to Forrester, companies in those countries will increasingly look to other near-shore/offshore locations like Spain, the Czech Republic, Russia, and Tunisia. 'Overall, local services firms in Western Europe will face a debilitating erosion of their growth opportunities by offshore competition. Worst hit will be UK-based application development specialists, which face having almost half of the growth in their market between now and 2009 whittled away by work moving overseas.' At the same time, the report also predicts that the UK will be the 'first European country to experience the economic boost from offshore efficiencies.' Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland, which are termed 'near-shore' locations, will be relatively unaffected, even though a certain amount of jobs will be off-shored from the economy. For those countries, the report by predicts that 'less than one tenth of one per cent' of jobs will move offshore. According to Forrester, a country like Ireland will still be able to compete as a location for off-shoring in certain niche areas. Many offshore locations, such as India and China, do not have the sort of expertise that has been developed in Ireland in areas such as the financial services, states the report
Kraje
China, Czechia, Germany, Spain, France, Ireland, India, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Tunisia, United Kingdom