Despite the furore over outsourcing of jobs in the US a new study has found that about 3.4 million jobs will be moved offshore by 2015, more than estimated two years ago.

According to Forrester Research about 3.4 million jobs will move offshore by 2015, a number slightly more than 3.3 million estimated two years ago.

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The small increase in the long-term forecast is due to changes made in the base-level members updated in 2002 by the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, the report said.

"By the end of 2003, 315,000 jobs had been shifted offshore, which is less than one per cent of the jobs in the affected categories. The number will grow to 1.6 per cent by the end of 2005," the research predicted.

It attributed this surge to the political backlash over offshore work.

"The political furore has increased the awareness of offshore outsourcing and increased the awareness of the value of offshore outsourcing," Forrester analyst Stephanie Moore said.

According to the director of Forrester Corporate Communications, Karyl Levinson,"User interest in offshore services has continued to rise particularly on the IT side. Companies are looking to stretch their flat or declining IT budgets and looking at offshore as a way of more with less, or the same amount."

"But the long-term projection is holding steady because the complexity of going offshore is still going to hold back companies," Forrester analyst John McCarthy said.

Although there are occasional reports of companies pulling out of offshore outsourcing, Forrester analysts say offshore development will continue to see steady growth.

Meanwhile, the Cambridge Massachusetts-based research firm said the number of US services jobs moving offshore by the end of 2005 will be 830,000, a 40 per cent jump over the original forecast of 588,000 published 18 months back.

The types of services included in this category are both IT and non-IT jobs, it said.