Staffing firm CEO says more US companies are 'nearshoring' less-expensive workers from Latin America

• Global human resources company Deel says more US-based companies are hiring workers from Latin America.
• Deel's CEO says US companies can hire Latin America-based staff at a lower cost than domestic employees.

As US companies continue laying off workers amid a downturn in the economy, some are also hiring employees — but they're looking not far from home.

It's called "nearshoring," and in this case it's companies zeroing in on workers from Latin America who can work in a time zone close to the US — and for less money than US-based staff.

Deel, a global human resources company, told Bloomberg that it estimated 3,000 US companies have used its platform to hire workers in Latin America in the first quarter of this year.

"If for the price of 10 engineers in the US, we can hire 100 engineers in Brazil, there's definitely something to think about there," Alex Bouaziz, CEO of Deel, told Bloomberg.

Companies that work with Deel pay an average annual salary to full-time contracted staff of $74,000 in Latin America in areas like engineering and product design, Bloomberg reported. US software developers earn a median salary of $127,000, Bloomberg said, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Deel said in the first quarter of this year, it's seen a 50% increase in US companies hiring workers from Latin America when compared to the same quarter last year. Most of the workers come from engineering hubs in Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil, according to Deel.

Deel's 2022 State of Global Hiring Report shows that Latin American countries were at the top of the list from where global companies were hiring. The firm's report uses data from its own 260,000 worker contracts across 160 countries and also draws from other external global data points.