Refers to the relocation or expansion of business activities, jobs, or production processes within a company’s home country rather than abroad. It may involve bringing work that was previously performed overseas back to domestic locations, establishing new domestic production capacity instead of foreign operations, or shifting tasks and services from international suppliers to domestic providers.

Onshoring can occur at multiple levels of economic activity. Firms may return entire production facilities or supply chains to domestic locations, or they may relocate specific tasks—such as manufacturing components, software development, customer service, or logistics operations—previously performed in foreign markets. In some cases, onshoring reflects “reshoring,” where companies bring back activities that had earlier been offshored; in other cases, it represents new domestic investment rather than the reversal of earlier offshoring decisions.

Several factors have contributed to renewed interest in onshoring in the 2020s, including supply chain disruptions, geopolitical risks, rising international transportation costs, national industrial policies, and advances in automation that reduce labor cost differentials between countries. Governments have also encouraged onshoring through incentives designed to strengthen domestic manufacturing capacity, critical technologies, and workforce development.

Onshoring has implications for labor markets, regional economic development, and workforce training systems, particularly when new domestic industries require specialized technical skills or new apprenticeship and credential pathways.

These terms should not be confused with:

• Offshoring: relocating work or production from a company’s home country to another country.
• Outsourcing: contracting work to an external organization, which may occur domestically or internationally.
• Reshoring: a subset of onshoring referring specifically to bringing previously offshored work back to the home country.