About Offshore Watch
Bringing transparency to offshoring practices across Australian industry.
Our Mission
Offshore Watch exists to track and document offshoring activity among Australian companies. We believe that workers, investors, policymakers, and the public deserve clear, accessible information about where work is being performed and how employment practices are shifting.
Offshoring decisions affect thousands of Australian jobs every year, yet comprehensive data on these practices has historically been fragmented and difficult to find. We aggregate publicly available information into a single, searchable resource so that anyone can understand the scope and trajectory of offshoring across industries.
The Scale
In November 2024, Australia's High Commissioner to India Philip Green confirmed that 30,000 Indians work full-time in Global Capability Centres (GCCs) for Australian companies. When subsidiaries and vendor-managed staff are included, the number exceeds 100,000.
The sectors with the largest offshore presence are banking, financial services, technology, telecommunications, and mining. Major Australian companies including ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, NAB, Telstra, Macquarie, BHP, and Rio Tinto all operate GCCs in India.
A 250-person team in India costs approximately $7.85M AUD per year compared to $26.6M AUD in Australia — a 70% cost saving. When outsourcing vendors propose teams to Australian companies, a typical structure is 80-85% offshore workers with only 2-3 people onshore for client management. This economic reality makes offshoring structurally embedded in corporate Australia's operating model.
It's not just tech and banking. The AFR's 2024 Top 100 Accounting Firms survey found two-thirds of top firms use offshore workers, with up to a third of staff at some firms located overseas. Deloitte reported 10% of client service hours were delivered via its Indian global delivery centre. KPMG outsourced 200 of 260 executive assistants to the Philippines in 2026, saving $17M per year ($87K Australian salary vs $10K offshore).
Sources: Moneycontrol (High Commissioner, Nov 2024), Inductus GCC Report (2025), AFR Top 100 Accounting Firms (Nov 2024)
What This Site Is — And Isn't
This site tracks where work is performed, not where workers come from. Our concern is economic — when Australian companies and government departments send work offshore, those wages, tax contributions, and skills development leave the Australian economy.
We have no issue with people of any nationality working in Australia. Workers from India, the Philippines, or anywhere else who live, work, and spend their wages here are contributing to the Australian economy. Immigration and offshoring are different issues.
We acknowledge that global operations can reduce costs, and that some of those savings may flow through to consumers. But we believe the trade-offs — Australian job losses, wage suppression, reduced local capability, and the concentration of profits among shareholders — deserve to be visible and understood.
The pattern we track is when Australian roles are eliminated and the same work is performed overseas — often by the same multinational vendor, at a fraction of the wage, with the savings going to shareholders rather than being reinvested locally. When a company posts record profits while cutting Australian staff and expanding offshore operations, that pattern deserves public scrutiny.
We also recognise that not all offshore operations are the same. A mining company operating a mine in another country is not “offshoring” in the same way as a bank moving its IT department to a low-cost country. We try to distinguish between companies that have genuine international operations and those that are replacing Australian workers to cut costs.
Methodology
Our data pipeline combines automated collection with human oversight to ensure accuracy and traceability.
We continuously monitor publicly available documents including modern slavery statements, annual reports, news articles, and trade publications for information about offshoring activity.
Structured data points — such as countries, headcounts, consultancies involved, and timelines — are extracted from source documents using large language models trained for information extraction.
Every AI-extracted data point is queued for human review. Verified claims are marked with a confidence level reflecting both the strength of the source and the clarity of the evidence.
Company profiles are updated as new information becomes available. Historical claims are preserved so users can track changes over time.
Data Sources
We draw on a range of publicly available sources to build a comprehensive picture of offshoring activity:
- Modern Slavery Statements — mandatory disclosures under the Modern Slavery Act that often detail offshore operations and supply chains
- Annual Reports & Investor Presentations — financial disclosures that reference workforce restructuring, cost optimisation, and geographic headcount breakdowns
- News Articles — reporting from Australian and international media on layoffs, restructures, and offshoring announcements
- Trade & Industry Publications — specialist outlets covering technology, finance, mining, and other sectors affected by offshoring
- Government & Regulatory Filings — ASX announcements, Senate inquiry submissions, and other public records
Transparency Principles
We hold ourselves to the same standard of transparency we ask of the companies we track.
Every claim on Offshore Watch is linked to a specific source document. Users can click through to view the original evidence and assess it for themselves.
Each data point carries a confidence level — high, medium, or low — based on the directness and reliability of the source. A company's own disclosure scores higher than a third-party news report; multiple corroborating sources increase confidence further.
Company profiles display a data completeness badge — complete, partial, or minimal — so users know at a glance how much information is available. We never present incomplete data as if it tells the full story.
Want to contribute? You can submit a tip with data, corrections, or insider knowledge. All submissions are reviewed before publishing.