When a company hires another company to do some aspect of its work for it.

Examples of this include (but are not limited to):

* Stores using another companies cleaning services for cleaning its floors etc (rather then having employees of their own hired as full time cleaners).

* An ISP using a third party for its e-mail services rather then using servers of their own.

* A company in need of call centre services using a third person company rather then building a call centre of its own.

Companies often outsource to save money. However, it's also possible they want to concentrate on their main service and allow another company to worry about secondary ones (ie, companies whose main service are those secondary ones).

Outsourcing unfortunatly costs jobs domestically when companies outsource overseas. This is why people dislike it so much.
Poor guys unemployed because his employer outsourced his job overseas.
by Guest February 2, 2005
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An easy method for corporations to maximize their profits and avoid the unions at the same time. Basically, it involves moving one's business to another part of the world where people will willingly under slavelike conditions and for 1/10 the pay of a Poverty-Class American worker.

See outsource and globalization for more definitions.
Outsourcing is creating a major economic boom, but piss-poor levels of domestic job growth because the Third World has all the employees the corporations need.

Oh, and the executives are pocketing the profits too.
by sarcastic March 29, 2004
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cheating on your partner, typically when your current partner doesn't give you what you need.
buddy: 'outsourcing again?'
he: 'yeah, she swallows...'

also,

buddy: 'outsourcing again?'
she: 'yeah, he has a car'
by little-miss can't do wrong March 10, 2007
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The natural result of governments and unions making it too expensive for a company to employ workers in it's country of origin.
We can no longer afford all the red tape and taxes the American government makes us deal with when we employ American workers, so we're outsourcing to India.
by Billy October 27, 2004
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Outsourcing makes it possible for small businesses and freelance workers survive in this tough times.
by Viast April 14, 2015
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Corporate use of slave labor in third world countries ruled by dictators, for the express purpose of avoiding American taxes.
No wonder so many corporate executives are billionaires! If not for outsourcing and free trade, they would have to pay their fair share of taxes and end up mere millionaires!
by meow2u3 November 27, 2007
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verb: to make profit by screwing your employees, your customers, and your country while at the same time lowering the quality of the work performed. Highly touted and promoted in articles by authors with Indian surnames.
When she called the unemployment office to inquire about her benefits she was outraged to discover she was speaking to someone in India. The American job had been outsourced.
by Noah Webster, Jr. February 17, 2005
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