While I'm no fan of sending jobs overseas just because it's supposedly cheaper, this news story really puts all the current hype in perspective. Only 2.5% of the jobs lost in Q1 were from layoffs due to offshoring.

Leave it to the media to blow things way out of proportion. I understand that it's news and ought to be covered, but it's equally newsworthy when we learn that the trend isn't as prevalent as the quantity of coverage led us to believe.

As with so many things, offshoring your customer service department or your IT staff is the latest fad. Most companies will recognize it for what it is and will avoid it suspiciously. Many of those that try it will find that they dramatically overestimated the savings or underestimated the difficulty of managing customer relationships across two languages, a dozen time zones and other red tape.