Baseless optimism?

The practice of sending IT jobs offshore remains controversial, and the extent of the phenomenon remains murky. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a group of IT professionals and academics, released a report last month that's rather optimistic about the future of IT careers in the U.S., but it was promptly criticized for painting such a bright picture. Association President David Patterson, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, told the San Francisco Chronicle, "People who could have wonderful careers in the field aren't even considering computer science because they've got the wrong facts. If you've got the talents, this is a pretty exciting field with lots of exciting things to do." Patterson's upbeat assessment reflects the study's findings.

The ACM used Bureau of Labor Statistics figures to estimate that new tech jobs are being created in the U.S. as fast or faster than they are being shipped overseas, but the report also decried the lack of reliable figures showing the extent of offshoring. Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology who has studied offshoring, told the Chronicle, "The report was a bit overly optimistic. I find it strange that although they admit there's no good data, they come out as optimistic that this isn't that big a deal."

2 percent to 3 percent

Percentage of IT jobs being offshored each year.