The City of Ottawa has been considered one of the areas least affected by the recession, but with 3,000 job losses last month and an increasing amount of high-tech outsourcing, economists say the city is feeling the pinch.

Last week, Dell's remaining Ottawa employees were told their French-language jobs would be outsourced to workers in Morocco.

Many English-language high-tech jobs have already been outsourced to India, and according to industry officials there is still more outsourcing to come.

Frédéric Boulanger, the president of Macadamian Technologies, an Ottawa-based company that develops software for larger companies, said his company will still do work in Ottawa, but will collaborate with labs it owns in Armenia.

He said the quality of the workforce high-tech companies can find in the former Soviet republic is extremely attractive right now.

"Under the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, all of the computer science stuff was done in Armenia," he said.

"We have the opportunity to find some very deep talent there in computer science, and in engineering."

India and the Philippines are still the top outsourcing prospects, but a job that vanishes from Ottawa could easily reappear in Ghana, Ukraine or Tunisia.

Johan Gott, who compiles a list of the top outsourcing locations for the Virginia-based consulting firm A.T. Kearney, said an increasing number of countries are being added to the list.

"I think what we're seeing is a sort of diversification of options, where places like Bulgaria, Egypt, Jordan or Morocco become more important," he said.

Analysts say that as educational standards rise around the world, more countries have begun to pitch their workforce to Western companies.

"It's not price alone, it's also the availability of talent," said Gott.