The outsourcing of jobs to China and India has moved to new levels, affecting white collar workers in information technology who’ve traditionally felt invulnerable to the same plight that affected the manufacturing industry. This trend is fraught with thorny issues on all sides. No one can claim definitively that the professional jobs lost in the U.S. can be attributed to being shipped overseas. But no one can deny that hiring is down from normal levels and rising tensions are creating political effects as people hunt for jobs. On the other hand, the jobs are creating a class of consumers in China and India which will drive production levels. Can the U.S. really go back to a protectionist policy in the face of increasingly integrated global economies?

A panel of experts gathered in Manhattan last month to answer some of these questions on how job migration is changing the economic landscape.