California Companies Outsource Jobs at Faster Pace, Study Finds.

Byline: Dean Calbreath

May 23--From San Diego, where telephone workers are striking partly because they fear their jobs may be sent offshore, to Sacramento, where legislators have been pushing new regulations on foreign work, there is growing public pressure to staunch the flow of jobs overseas.

Despite the growing pressure, recent statistics show that U.S. companies are exporting jobs at an even faster pace than they have in the past. By the end of next year, 830,000 service jobs, representing $36.7 billion in wages and 1.6 percent of U.S. employment in the sector, will have moved offshore, according to a study released last week by Forrester Research, a major corporate study center.

Those figures, which do not include manufacturing jobs, reflect a 40 percent jump from Forrester's previous projection -- made just 18 months ago -- that 588,000 service jobs would be exported by the end of next year. Forrester forecasts that in the next 10 years, 3.4 million service jobs will have shifted overseas, representing 6.4 percent of employment in the sector and $151.2 billion in lost wages.

Forrester, which based …