Outsourcing per se doesn't have anything to do with an economy losing jobs, e.g. Bank of Ireland recently outsourced some of their IT function to HP, but the jobs are remaining in Ireland, at least for now (though if the outsourcing leads to higher productivity this may also lead to some jobs being "lost".).
I don't think you can talk about it being "good" or "bad" in a general way. Outsourcing is currently in vogue, particularly in IT. It is probably used more often than appropriate by companies climbing on the band-wagon in order to appease their shareholders.
Bank of Ireland is an interesting example, as the function now being outsourced (ITSIS) was originally a separate joint-venture company which was "insourced" in the 90s!