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Not anymore.

It's not just clothing and electronics being made by workers in India, China and similar places. Now, office and professional jobs are being shipped out — raising the specter that skilled white-collar workers could face the same devastating job losses that decimated the manufacturing industry.

Almost any professional job that can be done long-distance is suddenly up for grabs. Jobs done by financial analysts, architectural drafters, telemarketers, accountants, claims adjusters, home loan processors and others at higher levels of the labor food chain are being farmed out to workers in other countries.

"We're not just talking about call-center jobs, but all kinds of jobs," says Deloitte Consulting analyst Christopher Gentle. "It doesn't leave any part of the corporation untouched."

These include high-paying, highly sought-after jobs that often require advanced degrees and years of study to attain. But instead of paying six-figure salaries to trained workers in America, more companies are shelling out $10,000 to $20,000 to get cheaper employees an ocean away.

Major U.S. companies, including such giants as IBM, Microsoft and Procter & Gamble, are leading the pack. Tens of thousands of jobs already have been shipped out, and analysts project that millions more will go in coming years.

Employers say outsourcing jobs to foreign countries makes them more competitive because they can reap enormous savings in labor costs. They argue that most of the jobs now going abroad are positions many Americans snub, such as telemarketing. Farming out that work leaves better, higher-paying jobs for American employees to do.

The trend represents a potentially seismic shift: In the next 15 years, American employers will move about 3.3 million white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages abroad, according to Forrester Research. That's up from $4 billion in wages in 2000.

Financial services companies alone plan to move more than 500,000 jobs offshore in the next five years, says consulting firm A.T. Kearney. Deloitte Consulting expects 2 million jobs worldwide to eventually move to countries such as India.

A warning from organized labor

To labor unions, farming out white-collars jobs is more than just another way for businesses to cut costs. They say the trend has the potential to plunder American jobs, prolong the weak job market that has characterized this jobless economic recovery and pose a long-term danger to the employment security long enjoyed by white-collar workers. Critics now are trying to mount an offensive.

"We see it as a threat to America's middle-class workforce, in terms of wages and benefits," says Marcus Courtney, president of Washington Alliance of Technology Workers in Seattle. "The service sector is not immune to the forces of globalization. We're talking about highly skilled, best-paying jobs. It's raising the concern of workers."

The Communications Workers of America this spring began pressing Congress to authorize an investigation into the growing number of jobs being shifted abroad. High-tech workers have handed out leaflets and held demonstrations protesting the trend in states such as Texas, Washington, Massachusetts and New York.

Critics are pushing for legislation that would halt projects from being sent abroad if they're funded by tax dollars. Others want tax incentives to help keep business on U.S. soil.

The worry: Increasing profit pressures and the ease of information exchange provided by the Internet will turn the wave of companies shipping out work into a tsunami — potentially affecting every sector of the white-collar labor force.

Among concerns:

• Benefits and pay. Secure in the knowledge that they can get cheaper workers abroad, American companies might begin slashing benefits here, critics say. Even U.S. workers who get jobs could see wages slashed because of the competition posed by their counterparts abroad, they say.

Companies have already been curbing benefits as labor costs — driven largely by health care costs — escalate.

Pay has also suffered as companies cut back on raises in a sluggish economy. As more companies start tapping workers abroad, critics say, U.S. workers will lose the last vestiges of their bargaining power.

At 123jump.com, a Miami Beach provider of investment advice, the company's 32 financial analysts live in India, Bulgaria and Argentina, earning $15,000 to $20,000 a year.

CEO Manish Shah says he could shell out $150,000 or more to hire analysts here. But why? His analysts usually have MBAs and speak fluent English.

"Can we stop (globalization)? No," Shah says. "We go to the cheapest possible cost with the best possible product."

• Loss of American jobs. Labor unions and consultants fear a repeat of what happened in the manufacturing sector, which has lost more than 2.6 million jobs in the past three years.

The scope and type of jobs being farmed out show how vulnerable many professional positions are. J.P. Morgan Chase expects to have 40 research analysts in Mumbai (formerly called Bombay), India, by year's end. Deloitte Consulting has about 1,000 employees in Mumbai and Hyderabad, India, many handling research work. A.T. Kearney uses workers in New Delhi for research and office support.

IBM has expanded offices in Bangalore, India, to handle engineering work, and is reportedly considering a big offshore push. Hewlett-Packard has 5,000 employees in India, doing research, developing software and staffing call centers. The companies say they've had Indian workers for years.

• An unstoppable force. While the overall percentage of jobs being farmed out to workers abroad is still small, the advantages to U.S. companies are so attractive that labor unions fear any congressional efforts to curtail the practice will be doomed.

Already, major companies are able to work around the clock because of their presence in other countries.

Oracle has two big development centers in India, and 4,000 employees will be stationed there by year's end. Programmers there pick up projects when their American counterparts leave for the day, and vice versa. That way, Oracle is working 24 hours a day.

The numbers are continuing to swell. Consulting firm Brulant recently surveyed 38 large companies about outsourcing plans. While only 18% were seriously considering it, "100% of them were evaluating it," says CEO Len Pagon Jr.

Once gone, jobs won't return

If outsourcing takes off, it's unlikely to stop, experts say. "The jobs aren't coming back, that's for sure," says Forrester Research analyst John McCarthy.

While the trend has been underway for years, only now — as the pace of outsourcing picks up and new projections show its use continuing to grow — is debate about the practice increasing. One reason for the attention is the recent economic doldrums. With unemployment at 6.2% in July, more white-collar workers are becoming anxious about job security. While many have been shaken by layoffs, workers' new concern that jobs could be lost permanently to other countries is sounding an alarm.

Says Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington: "This will cause more churning and concern higher up the professional food chain. Blue-collar workers have been used to this for years."

Since the first migration of white-collar work involved tech jobs, other employees in professional jobs thought they were immune. Now, office jobs many thought could never be done abroad are being farmed out.

In recent years, the Internet has made it easy to pass data and documents around the world. In India, deregulation of the telephone industry has caused rates for some international calls to fall as much as 30%. That's made it possible for telemarketers and customer service agents to work seamlessly with U.S. customers. Many assume an American name and take training in U.S. customs, making it hard to distinguish between a call from Houston or Hyderabad. "In India, it's a very respectable job," says Chaitra Aiyar, 23, who works at Cellbion, a call center near Mumbai. She goes by the name Cindy Newman when making calls.

Workers who have never been in a U.S. office are handling such sensitive areas as payroll and benefits. Procter & Gamble handles payroll, travel, benefits administration, accounts payable, invoice processing and other work at offices in San Jose, Costa Rica; Manila; and Newcastle, United Kingdom. About 7,000 people work in these offices, which opened in 1999.

Companies say their offices abroad are run as tightly as those in the USA. But critics disagree.

"There are real security risks," says John Guinasso at Data Systems Security in San Jose, Calif. "Corporations here don't have control over who has access to information once it gets out of their hands. There are real concerns."

Are the fears real?

Is all the hand wringing overblown? Labor groups say no, but companies and some analysts argue that shipping white-collar jobs abroad is hardly a menace to American jobs.

"The recession is making all sorts of people insecure. I don't see this as a huge threat to the U.S. economy," Bivens says.

Since labor and land in countries such as India can be cheap, the cost savings can become "extraordinary," says A.T. Kearney Vice President Andrea Bierce.

An MBA with three years experience in India will make about $12,000 a year, compared with $100,000 in the USA, she says; a programmer will make $5,000, compared with $60,000. "There are an awful lot of companies thinking about this," Bierce says.

But Bierce warns that the savings aren't immediate for many companies. The cost of moving part of a business abroad can, at first, be higher than the cost of keeping it in the USA, experts say.

But it's the fact that workers abroad are so cheap over the long term that has detractors crying foul. It even gnaws at some employers.

David Stixrood, president of Dallas-based Corp-Wireless, which provides broadband wireless connectively to the Internet in truck stops, opted not to use an overseas help desk — even though it was cheaper — partly because he's concerned about what outsourcing will do to American jobs.

"We're going to lose all those jobs," Stixrood says. "People are losing their jobs to overseas markets. Unfortunately, we live in a very competitive world, and sometimes competition is very cruel."