• CEO Johnny Taylor Jr. told WSJ he outsourced an employee's job after she requested it be remote.
  • Hiring someone in India saved the company around 40% in labor costs, he told the Journal.
  • Since the pandemic, some tech companies have hired remote workers overseas, sometimes amid layoffs.

A CEO's anecdote to the Wall Street Journal highlights a potential risk workers may face in asking their boss to let them work remotely on a permanent basis: the company could outsource their job instead.

That's what happened when an employee at the Society for Human Resource Management who wanted to move states suggested she could work her tech role remotely in the US, the company's CEO, Johnny Taylor Jr., told the Journal.

Taylor instead decided to outsource the employee's role to someone in India, and the offshoring of the position led to around 40% in labor cost savings, he told WSJ. 

The Society for Human Resource Management has a hybrid remote work policy that allows employees to work from home on Friday and Monday, a company spokesperson told Insider.

Taylor isn't alone in looking to tap labor from overseas — where the average compensation for tech jobs is often far lower than in the US.

Remote work for US workers boomed during the pandemic. But as some companies continue to struggle to find workers and companies look to reduce costs, offshoring positions overseas could see a surge, Insider's Jacob Zinkula previously reported.  

This could hurt white-collar workers in the US in particular — a group that has been especially hit by layoffs this past year. If more US businesses outsource, meaning they open up their job listings to overseas workers, white-collar workers could find themselves competing against a global pool of applicants.

Some tech companies have already turned to overseas labor, including in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, Insider's Aki Ito reported. This is a stark change for an industry that's often prioritized in-person collaboration, Ito reported, and the number of companies considering this option is rising. Companies who were looking to hire engineers in the US or Latin America jumped to 75%, tech-recruiting platform Laskie reported in March. A year ago, 55% of companies were considering US and Latin American candidates.

"US tech companies are saying, 'We can hire an engineer in the United States for $300,000 or we can hire somebody great internationally with very similar experience for $75,000,'" Chris Bakke, CEO of the tech-recruiting platform Laskie, previously told Insider. 

Still, only positions that could be completed entirely remotely are at risk to be impacted. And the number of remote positions offered in the US has been steadily declining, especially as more companies impose return-to-office policies. While fully remote work in the US peaked at 60% in 2020, as of March, only about 13% of US job postings were remote, according to the staffing firm Manpower Group. The year before, 17% of job postings offered remote work.