Jobs are exported; service (or work) is outsourced.

The sentence you cited is part of the tilte of an article that can be found here:

http://www.iht.com/articles/126616.html

The full titel is "Bob Herbert: Outsourcing jobs is a threat to the U.S. economy." If quoted correctly, then Bob Herbert was being sloppy with the English Language. There are at least two problems with the use of "outsourcing" here:

1. Jobs are exported, not outsourced. Services are outsourced. For example, a hospital may decide to outsource its housekeeping service rather than employ a whole housekeeping department. The housekeeping staff would work directly for a housekeeping company, but would do the work at the hospital. When this happens, we speak of the service (housekeeping) as having been outsourced, not the jobs.

2. The topic is not outsourcing at all. It is off-shore outsourcing. In fact, this is clear from the article itself, which is about a conference entitled "Off-shore Outsourcing: Making the Journey Work for Your Corporation." Otherwise, it would not make any difference to the national economy. If the workers doing the outsourced work were from the same country, the outsourcing would not in any way affect the number of people employed, except that, if done right, it may help reduce the bureaucratic overhead, or what we call الترهل الإداري. But if the jobs are exported (and this is the correct term to use) the national unemployment rate would be affected. So Bob Herbert should have said one of two things:

1. "Off-shore outsourcing is a threat to the U.S. economy."

2. "Exporting jobs is a threat to the U.S. economy."

The first is called توريد العمالة

The second is called تصدير الوظائف

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Note added at 2004-01-27 07:53:56 (GMT)
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Correction:

اسـتيراد العمالة أو تصدير الوظائف

I apologize for the error.