WASHINGTON - Governor Ben Bernanke, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, has allayed fears that outsourcing would lead to wholesale hijacking of U.S. tech jobs to India and other countries.

Speaking on the subject on March 30 at the Duke University in North Carolina, he cited statistical evidence to indicate that only slightly more than 2 percent of gross job losses in the U.S. market in the past 10 years are the result of import competition. Bernanke said that attempts to restrict trade may temporarily slow job losses in affected industries but that the costs of such actions are many times greater.