CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Rows of engraved faces stare from plaques on the Inventors Wall.

These are engineers who have made design breakthroughs used on some of the world’s most popular cars and trucks. All the engineers work for Delphi, a Michigan company, at its Mexico Technical Center.

They’re here largely because Delphi has thousands of assembly-line workers here, putting together car parts.

As manufacturing jobs moved out of the United States over the past decade — whether across the border to Juarez or across the ocean to Beijing — many political leaders soothed the nerves of an anxious work force by assuring that white-collar jobs were staying put.

But increasingly, companies that have moved their manufacturing plants out of the United States are shipping some of the engineering and research and development work, too.

“The manufacturing jobs brought more white-collar jobs along with them than most people suspected,” said Tom Fullerton, professor of economics at the University of Texas at El Paso.

It’s a natural progression for research and development jobs to follow manufacturing plants, experts say, because much of the design work is geared toward improving the assembly process.

Also, companies become comfortable with a foreign location after having moved a portion of their work there. A study by A.T. Kearney, a business consulting firm specializing in outsourcing, found that China is listed as a favored potential offshoring site by many companies because they already have plants there.

Paul Almeida, president of the AFL-CIO’s Department for Professional Employees, believes that research and development jobs will continue moving to offshore manufacturing sites.

“They keep saying we’ll innovate new jobs. Where? At the factory in the foreign country is where that’s going to happen,” he said.

Some economists say such concerns are overblown. The loss of white-collar jobs has been minimal compared with the overall size of the workforce, said Bernard Weinstein, director of the University of North Texas Center for Economic Development and Research.

“It’s a drop in the bucket,” he said, then corrected himself. “It’s actually a drop in the drop in the bucket.”

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