As a Denver IT Staffing agency, we're very supportive of bringing tech jobs back to the United States. So it's been interesting to see all the recent headlines about "insourcing." But is it all just political rhetoric? Or will companies really start reversing the trend of outsourcing jobs to other countries?

According to this InformationWeek story, the answer is: both.

As you may know, President Obama recently announced that it's time for American businesses to bring back jobs they have outsourced to other countries because "a lot of folks are still looking for work." From a political viewpoint, this focus on insourcing may simply boil down to an election year in which voters are focused on the struggling economy, unemployment and the growing income gap.

However, there really is a push to repatriate some tech work that has gone overseas, and it has nothing to do with altruism, nationalism, or politics. Sometimes insourcing just makes good business sense.

Here's the reality, according to the article:

There's no broad trend toward insourcing, but there is a recognition that the pressure to cut costs over the past decade led many companies to push the envelope on offshoring a bit too far, and that it's time for some rebalancing.

CGI U.S. president George Schindler, who attended Obama's insourcing summit, said that some parts of the U.S. are becoming more cost competitive with India. "They offer a great cost of living, they are motivated from a local government perspective, and there's partnerships with community colleges that can train people in the skills we need," Schindler said. "It makes an attractive cost case, whereas the opposite is happening in some other parts of the world." While he's happy to create jobs in the U.S. and contribute to local communities, Schindler said the decision to insource is a financial one.

Any substantial growth in insourcing will likely result from business and technological reasons, not from anything a politician says in a speech. But hey, at least the conversation is taking place, and we're glad that at some level there is a trend toward creating local jobs.

If you're looking to insource any of your Denver company's IT needs, contact us.