President Bush's push to outsource hundreds of thousands of federal jobs could end up shifting some high-tech employment to foreign workers, administration and industry officials said Thursday.

Although Bush has been calling for the creation of more jobs, his administration has been promoting a plan to open roughly 425,000 federal jobs to competition from private companies.

Harris Miller, president of the trade group Information Technology Association of America, nodded "yes" Thursday when asked whether that move inevitably would mean some federal jobs would go to contractors or subcontractors operating over- seas.

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Many unemployed technology workers are blaming their job losses on employers -- including Dell Inc., Intel Corp., Motorola Inc., Computer Sciences Corp. -- who send work to low-wage countries, such as India and Ireland.