"There has been a great deal of media coverage of 'offshoring' – the movement of jobs from the UK to abroad. One example is the focus on movement of call centre jobs to countries such as India. This article places offshoring in the context of the economics of international trade, both in theory and in practice. It then examines the evidence for recent labour market impacts using official UK labour market data. Over the last ten years the UK, at a macro level, has been a net exporter of IT-enabled services. Occupation data from the Labour Force Survey show that at micro level, employment and redundancy patterns in the labour market reflect the positive macro data, but there are some mixed results. Skill/qualification levels and weekly earnings are considered but finding the reasons behind these mixed findings is difficult due to data limitations both in sample size and the questions asked. Regional variations are also considered."

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