Upping the ante against the anti-outsourcing campaign in the United States, the National Association of Software and Service Companies said that the US economy could lose up to $2 trillion worth of growth opportunities due to a massive labour shortage by 2010, if it did not take appropriate measures like outsourcing and easing immigration norms to bridge this gap.

A joint study by Nasscom and Evalueserve released in New Delhi on Thursday forecast a labour shortage of 5.6 million in the US by 2010, a large chunk of which would be in high-tech areas.

This gap could be bridged through immigration of 3.2 million workers and offshoring to the tune of 1.3 million jobs, the report said, adding that India was strongly positioned to claim over 50 per cent of offshored work on the strength of its cost and language (English-speaking) advantages.

"There will be a short term impact on the US labour force. About 1.3 million jobs will move offshore between 2003-2010, impacting one million US workers," Marc Vollenweider, CEO of Evalueserve, said. The remaining labour gap of 1.1 million workers would have to be bridged with temporary workers.

The survey says that the US economy loses an average of $231, 289 for every job protected in the economy and protectionism costs the US consumers nearly $100 billion annually.

"The study clearly shows that the necessity of offshore activity to support the growth of the US economy. The report also found that offshoring keeps US businesses competitive, create new markets for US goods and services and fills the shortfall in services labor that the US is expected to face in the next seven years," said Vollenweider.

According to the report, for every $100 of call-center work offshored by US firms, $143 is invested back into the US economy in the form of repatriated profits, increased sales of telecom equipment and cost-savings.

Similarly, in the case of IT services offshoring, for every $100 of work offshored, $133 is invested back into the US and $142 is invested back in case of high-end knowledge services like equity research, underwriting, tax preparation and risk management.

Utilisation of offshore facilities has resulted in the growth of the local economies and an increase in the disposable income leading to the expansion of the global market for US goods and services.

"For example, in India the proportion of the consuming class in the overall population expanded from 14 per cent to 30 per cent in the 1990s and is set to reach 40 per cent in 2006-07. The Indian retail sector is expected to grow from $180 billion in 2003 to $300 billion by 2010. According to the survey, leading US corporations like Pepsi, Coke, General Motors, GE and Whirlpool are benefiting from this.

Offshoring of IT services has enabled US workers move to specialized and creative roles while moving process oriented programming to offshore locations.

The proportion of specialists in the US IT workforce increased from 38 per cent in 1983 to 74 per cent in 2002 About 0.3 million workers (0.2 per cent of the workforce) will be unemployed for more than 3 months due to offshoring. This segment will require re-training and redeployment.