International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) is taking offshoring to a new level.

According to CNN/Money, Big Blue has a program called Project Match that will "help interested workers whose jobs are on the chopping block to "identify potential opportunities in (overseas) growth markets and facilitate consideration by hiring managers in those markets.'" It will even help with moving costs and provide assistance with visas.

The trend is not good if you are a tech worker at IBM (NYSE: IBM) in the US. By the end of this year, Big Blue will have 100,000 jobs in India, Russia, Brazil, and China. That number was closer to 85,000 just last year.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "this year, IBM's employment in India is likely to reach 73,000 people, up from 52,000 last year."

This is a cruel irony to the news. The US is still the world's center for hardware and software creation. Most innovations in these field still originate here. The world's largest chip-maker, Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), is an American company. The world largest software company ,Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), was started in the US, as was the world's premier internet company, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Yet, when it comes to economic benefits, many of the tech giants are moving jobs to India and China to get cheaper labor. While this may help their earnings, it hurts high-end employment in the US.

Created in America. Maintained and supported somewhere else. A bit of a tragedy.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Historically, North Carolina was well-known for tobacco, furniture production, and textiles. Though the Tar Heel state is still a leading textiles employer, both textiles and furniture production have been diminished by offshoring; North Carolina is one of the states most affected by job loss to other parts of the world. The state also remains a leader in tobacco production, but concerns about the loss of government subsidies have prompted many farmers to switch to other crops or to quit farming altogether.

Today, Charlotte, North Carolina, is known as the second largest financial center in the U.S., and the Raleigh-Durham area is a tech and research district. Carlisle Cos. (NYSE: CSL), Commscope Inc. (NYSE: CTV), and Red Hat Inc. (NYSE: RHT) can be found in the state.

The Forbes 2007 list of the 100 best mid cap stocks included two from North Carolina. One of those is Charlotte-based Carlisle, a manufacturer of such diverse products as brakes for heavy-duty trucks, roofing materials, food service equipment, and aerospace cabling assemblies. Carlisle appointed a new CEO in June, and in August it marked its 31st consecutive year of dividend increases. Carlisle's five-year EPS growth rate of 19.4% is better than its industry average, but less than the S&P 500. Earnings missed Wall Street estimates in the first three quarters of 2007, the company reporting 84 cents per share in the recent third quarter report, missing expectations by three cents, but 14 cents more than in the same period last year. The share price began to slide even before Carlisle trimmed its full-year guidance again in October, to open at $39.43 on Friday, down from the 52-week high of $51.57 in August.

Is America bleeding cutting-edge technology research, development and leadership to foreign soil? If so, why is that? Well, that question was put to some of the top business leaders in the U.S. recently, who all chimed in on why America could lose some (or all) of that leadership, to the economic chagrin of us all.

It makes pure economic sense for global companies -- which all companies have to be these days -- to locate resources next to growth areas. Increasingly, those growth areas are outside the U.S. and the employees are -- in many cases -- well-educated and can be paid significantly less than American counterparts -- although this can backfire in drastic fashion sometimes.

Result? Dollars siphoning off America and into foreign economies, either directly or indirectly. What can we do? Further educational initiatives? More motivated workforces? Globalize entire workforces to work from anywhere in the world? Read what some of these business leaders say on the topic here.