As American companies continue their search for cheap labor and locations for call centers and other back-office operations abroad, many find they need look no further than places like Nacogdoches, Texas, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

It is seen as the flip side of the outsourcing coin. As big companies start facing quality concerns and a political backlash from moving jobs overseas, American’s small towns are emerging as alternatives. A company can move a call center to say, Nacogdoches or Twin Falls, Idaho, and instantly start offering some of the best jobs in town-even if they pay only $7 or $8 an hour, the report said.

“Our clients are starting to realise they can stay in the U.S. and go to smaller markets where the wages will have an impact,” Jim Trobaugh, senior vice president of CR Richard Ellis, a Los Angeles commercial real-estate services firm, was quoted as saying by the Journal.

By moving out of major cities to less-populous areas in the country, where real estate and labor are cheap, some companies find they can save millions of dollars, the report said, adding that the productivity gains are often palpable. Many small towns have lost a major manufacturing plant and are still home to an eager labor force. Call centers-where workers answer inbound sales calls, provide customer support or make outbound telemarketing calls, sometimes 24/7-offer jobs that are relatively easy to fill, the Journal reported.

According to to the report, US Bank recently picked Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, for a new call center for its growing credit-card services division. The city “has pretty serious unemployment,” Scott Hanson, a vice president with US Bank, a unit of U.S. Bancorp, Minneapolis, was quoted as saying. “We can go in with 500 jobs and really make a difference in a community.”

US Bank had looked at India, but decided against putting its call center there. One big reason being the public relations fallout the company would have expected following an outcry in the U.S. against outsourcing.

Shipping jobs overseas, to take advantage of dirt-cheap wages in India, the Philippines and other countries, is not likely to stop anytime soon, the report said. For instance International Business Machines Corp., of Armonk, N.Y., said in April that it purchased Daksh Services Ltd., an Indian call-center with about 6,000 employees.

(Compiled from news dispatches)