1. Cashiers
2. Couriers and Messengers
3. Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers and Weighers
4. Customer Service Representative
5. Book Binder
6. Film Processors
7. Fishers and Fishing Vessel Operators
8. Electronic Home Entertainment Equipment Installers and Repairers
9. Procurement Clerks
10. Power Plant Operators

More than two years ago, Reuters, the financial news service, opened a new center in Bangalore. The 340 employees, including an editorial team of 13 local journalists, was deployed to write about corporate earnings and broker research on U.S. companies. Since then, the Reuters staff at the center has grown to about 1,600, with 100 journalists working on U.S. stories.

The company has also moved photo editing work from Canada and Washington, D.C., to Singapore.

More expansion is planned in India, according to David Schlesinger, Reuters global managing editor, who said that costs were significantly lower in India, although the competition to recruit financial journalists there was increasing.

The system has "allowed us to really increase the breadth of companies that we cover," Schlesinger said. "One of the problems with the U.S. equities universe is that there are so many companies, and this has allowed us to cover so many more than we could before. And it's allowed us to increase our depth because it's freed up reporters in New York to do more."

All these companies grew up in the Internet age and were designed to take advantage of the networked world. But now the productive potential of millions of plugged-in enthusiasts is attracting the attention of old-line businesses, too. For the last decade or so, companies have been looking overseas, to India or China, for cheap labor. But now it doesn't matter where the laborers are -- they might be down the block, they might be in Indonesia -- as long as they are connected to the network.

Technological advances in everything from product design software to digital video cameras are breaking down the cost barriers that once separated amateurs from professionals. Hobbyists, part-timers, and dabblers suddenly have a market for their efforts, as smart companies in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd. The labor isn't always free, but it costs a lot less than paying traditional employees. It's not outsourcing; it's crowdsourcing.

"We don't think doing things in India is a loss to the U.S.," said N.R. Narayana Murthy, co-founder and chairman of Infosys Technologies Ltd., an industry leader in outsourced software services. Nor, he said, does he think doing things in the United States is a loss for India. Almost two-thirds of Infosys' revenue is generated in the U.S. market.

Murthy, 59, is lobbying students at the Stanford Business School, where he is a member of the advisory council, to come east - way east - to Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley. With its Microsoft-like campus, Infosys provides support to big U.S. companies like Best Buy, Circuit City and even Microsoft. (Microsoft is a parent company of MSNBC.com.)

"To add significant value to corporations from a country like India is an exciting opportunity," Murthy said, "and to be part of that opportunity is one of a kind."

Infosys' profits are three times those of its U.S. competitors. One of the main reasons is salaries. The employees here - the software engineers - make about a quarter of the salary of someone doing the same job in the United States.

The new animated short, "Big Box Mart," features an "unsuspecting consumer" who loses his highly skilled factory job because the work is being transferred to a lower-wage economy overseas. The worker ends up as a janitor at a mega-retailer. "Big Box Mart" debuted late Thursday during NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." Shortly after that, at 9 p.m. PDT, the animation became available on MSN Video and at JibJab.com.