Outsourcing to India might just become a thing of the past. Who needs to outsource when it's just about as cheap to keep the work in the USA?

Wage costs are on the rise in China and India, spurring companies like GE to relocate some operations back in the US, something my colleague Nick Lord recently discussed. And of course, the employment rate in this country has been skirting 10 percent for a while. 

For that reason, a growing number of US companies are starting to outsource work back home, specifically focusing on small towns where the cost of living is low and so are wages and employment rates. They pay more than they would for services provided from India but considerably less--up to 50 percent less--than they'd have to pay similarly-skilled urban dwellers.

The practice is called "ruralsourcing"--or "onshoring", as it's also known--and a handful of companies have sprung up to provide these services, which mostly focus on technical back-office support and programming for IT firms. Often they're located in or near college communities, though not always. 

The other attraction is security. A story in CNNMoney.com quotes David Evans, an IT director at Human Genome Services in Rockville, Md., who opted to ruralsource when he balked at the prospect of sending confidential information to a country not covered by US intellectual property protection. He also found that different time zones and cultural differences caused misunderstandings. 

Certainly companies aren't in the business of altruism and, as cheap labor in emerging countries becomes more expensive, why not take advantage of the cost-saving and logistical benefits of ruralsourcing? And surely it's better for Americans to keep work in this country.

Still something about it sticks in my craw. Just as with outsourcing abroad, there's a risk that must always be managed: drawing the line between reducing labor costs and at least the perception that you're taking advantage of the un- or under-employed. Plus these moves could mean a continued downward pressure on wages overall, with destructive long-term consequences for economic growth.