The Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist

[LiberalArkie]

Finally the truth

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-24/the-tech-worker-shortage-doesnt-really-exist



Along with temporary deportation relief for millions, President Obama’s executive action will increase the number of U.S. college graduates from abroad who can temporarily be hired by U.S. corporations. That hasn’t satisfied tech companies and trade groups, which contend more green cards or guest worker visas are needed to keep tech industries growing because of a shortage of qualified American workers. But scholars say there’s a problem with that argument: The tech worker shortage doesn’t actually exist.

“There’s no evidence of any way, shape, or form that there’s a shortage in the conventional sense,” says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University. “They may not be able to find them at the price they want. But I’m not sure that qualifies as a shortage, any more than my not being able to find a half-priced TV.”

For a real-life example of an actual worker shortage, Salzman points to the case of petroleum engineers, where the supply of workers has failed to keep up with the growth in oil exploration. The result, says Salzman, was just what economists would have predicted: Employers started offering more money, more people started becoming petroleum engineers, and the shortage was solved. In contrast, Salzman concluded in a paper released last year by the liberal Economic Policy Institute, real IT wages are about the same as they were in 1999. Further, he and his co-authors found, only half of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) college graduates each year get hired into STEM jobs. “We don’t dispute the fact at all that Facebook (FB) and Microsoft (MSFT) would like to have more, cheaper workers,” says Salzman’s co-author Daniel Kuehn, now a research associate at the Urban Institute. “But that doesn’t constitute a shortage.”

The real issue, say Salzman and others, is the industry’s desire for lower-wage, more-exploitable guest workers, not a lack of available American staff. “It seems pretty clear that the industry just wants lower-cost labor,” Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in an e-mail. A 2011 review by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the H-1B visa program, which is what industry groups are lobbying to expand, had “fragmented and restricted” oversight that weakened its ostensible labor standards. “Many in the tech industry are using it for cheaper, indentured labor,” says Rochester Institute of Technology public policy associate professor Ron Hira, an EPI research associate and co-author of the book Outsourcing America.


Snip

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-24/the-tech-worker-shortage-doesnt-really-exist

[pa28]

1. Yes. This piece lays out the problem in very clear terms.

The administration continually treats wage stagnation as this big mystery while at the same time undercutting the labor market at every turn.

More H1b's because the President listens to people like Jeff Immelt and silicon valley megadonors who tell him there is a skills shortage. More trade deals with low wage countries like Vietnam that give virtually unlimited access to our markets.

Wage stagnation is no mystery but some very important people want it to be treated like one.

[jeff47]

2. Yes, the only shortage is of workers willing to work for 1/2 price.

Let's push kids into STEM careers! And then yank the rug out from under them!!

[progressoid]

3. Rec

[Skier101]

4. No kidding!

It's been going on for years in the IT field. Outsourcing and constant lobbying for more H1B visas while reducing the experienced workers. I'm glad to have retired and be out of it finally, but I feel bad for the developers that still have to work in the current environment.

[Fred Friendlier]

5. “They may not be able to find them at the price they want. "

Beginning and end of story.

Funny, however, that there is always money for mergers & acquisitions and to keep the corporate jet warmed up. Price is no object when dealing with the inner circle.

[YoungDemCA]

6. +1

[AndyTiedye]

7. K/R

[appalachiablue]

8. "1990 Congress passes H-1B visa program. By the early 2000s, nearly a million college-

educated Americans lose their jobs to imported foreign workers, mainly in high-tech fields". From Hedrick Smith, Pulitzer prize author of "Who Stole the American Dream?" (2012), reprinted in "YES!" Magazine, Fall 2014.

There were two articles 2 weeks ago on DU about a Calif. Electronics Corp. importing workers from India who they paid $1.21 per hour. Department of Labor fined the co. $3,500, an incentive to continue. The article poster comments were a real eye opener- a US worker in PA saw imported Asians living in 1 room, 8 commuting in one car to work.

2011 film, "Heist: Who Stole the American Dream" shows an actual filmed segment of a law firm HR conference with speakers explaining how they don't have to hire qualified American candidates.

It's untrue that the US doesn't have enough skilled tech workers, or STEM majors and it's a disgrace that should be brought up to representatives in both parties. Neoliberal economics= Race to the Bottom.

[bhikkhu]

9. He's not increasing H1B visas, he's just declining to deport college students

...most of whom have lived and worked here much of their lives, and many of whom don't have any memory of any other country or culture than ours. Americans, but for the paperwork. Not that anything in the OP is untrue, but its wrong to support the deportation of US college students and grads for the sake of improving our job market.

[maced666]

10. A Zuckerberg conspiracy. I knew it.

Since he met Obama over this now proven fake 'tech shortage' - what was the meeting REALLY about?!

[raccoon]

11. K&R. Finally the truth from this leftist rag :sarcasm:, Businessweek. nt