San Francisco: Concern that American jobs are being sent abroad represents "hysteria", the largest US technology trade group said yesterday (March 23, 2004), as it called for new education and immigration policies to boost employment.

"In today's hysteria over offshore outsourcing, productivity has become a four-letter word," said the Washington, DC-based American Electronics Association, whose member companies, numbering more than 3,000, employ 1.8 million people.

"We believe that offshore outsourcing is the least important variable in the decline of high-tech jobs," the group wrote in a report on the subject.

The trade group said data on foreign outsourcing was based either on anecdotes or questionable projections, and it took specific issue with a report by Forrester Research that said an estimated 3.3 million US service industry jobs will be moved offshore by 2015.

The Forrester forecast was based on faulty labour force projections made at the height of the technology bubble, the trade group said.

In recent months, the US public and politicians have highlighted the movement of some US jobs to lower-cost centres around the world. Several technology companies, for instance, have begun routing customer service telephone calls to India.

The trade group said the United States could stem technology job loss by mandating improvements in math and science education in elementary and secondary schools.

The group also said the country should give permanent residency to all foreigners who graduate with advanced university degrees.