A Hiring Binge Abroad

The biggest companies in the United States are on a hiring spree in India. They are building hundreds of overseas office parks. These aren’t call centers — they’re offices for Indian professionals employed by global companies to perform advanced tasks that, not long ago, Americans would have carried out. There are already 1,800 of these centers, and the rate of growth is doubling. They will soon employ two million Indians.

President Trump wants to restore American manufacturing. He is preparing to impose tariffs on India, a move that he says will bring jobs back and close a $46 billion trade deficit.

But tariffs reduce trade by making goods more expensive; they don’t affect services or offshoring, the practice of hiring workers overseas. Visa restrictions are equally irrelevant. The roles at these new centers are not for immigrants. They’re for people who want to stay in India and work for American companies.

Today’s newsletter is about a new kind of offshore office park. Here, Indian workers are doing the kind of jobs that American workers envy — for American companies. We’ll cover the firms that are building them and the professionals who now staff them.

Office space, then and now

In the 1990s, banks and big tech companies realized they could send jobs to India, where wages are just a fraction of those paid in the United States. Many of these were positions Americans didn’t want to fill. Sweaty youngsters piled into rooms in the middle of the night to help American customers rebook their flights or learn whether warranties had expired.