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    New Study: There may not be a shortage of American STEM graduates after all

    Washington Post
    April 24, 2013

    Study: There may not be a shortage of American STEM graduates after all

    By Jia Lynn Yang, Published: April 24


    If there’s one thing that everyone can agree on in Washington, it’s that the country has a woeful shortage of workers trained in science, technology, engineering and math — what’s referred to as STEM.
    President Obama has said that improving STEM education is one of his top priorities. Chief executives regularly come through Washington complaining that they can’t find qualified American workers for openings at their firms that require a science background. And armed with this argument in the debate over immigration policy, lobbyists are pushing hard formore temporary work visas, known as H-1Bs, which they say are needed to make up for the lack of Americans with STEM skills.

    But not everyone agrees. A study released Wednesday by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute reinforces what a number of researchers have come to believe: that the STEM worker shortage is a myth.

    The EPI study found that the United States has “more than a sufficient supply of workers available to work in STEM occupations.”

    Basic dynamics of supply and demand would dictate that if there were a domestic labor shortage, wages should have risen. Instead, researchers found, they’ve been flat, with many Americans holding STEM degrees unable to enter the field and a sharply higher share of foreign workers taking jobs in the information technology industry. (IT jobs make up 59 percent of the STEM workforce, according to the study.)

    The answer to whether there is a shortage of such workers has important ramifications for the immigration bill. If it exists, then there’s an urgency that justifies allowing companies to bring more foreign workers into the country, usually on a short-term H-1B visa. But those who oppose such a policy argue that companies want more of these visas mainly because H-1B workers are paid an estimated 20 percent less than their American counterparts. Why allow these companies to hire more foreign workers for less, the critics argue, when there are plenty of Americans who are ready to work?

    The EPI study said that while the overall number of U.S. students who earn STEM degrees is small — a fact that many lawmakers and the news media have seized on — it’s more important to focus on what happens to these students after they graduate. According to the study, they have a surprisingly hard time finding work.

    Only half of the students graduating from college with a STEM degree are hired into a STEM job, the study said.

    “Even in engineering,” the authors said, “U.S. colleges have historically produced about 50 percent more graduates than are hired into engineering jobs each year.”

    The picture is not that bright for computer science students, either. “For computer science graduates employed one year after graduation . . . about half of those who took a job outside of IT say they did so because the career prospects were better elsewhere, and roughly a third because they couldn’t find a job in IT,” the study said.

    While liberal arts graduates might be used to having to look for jobs with only tenuous connections to their majors, the researchers said this shouldn’t be the case for graduates with degrees attached to specific skills such as engineering.

    The tech industry has said that it needs more H-1B visas in order to hire the “best and the brightest,” regardless of their citizenship. Yet the IT industry seems to have a surprisingly low bar for education. The study found that among IT workers, 36 percent do not have a four-year college degree. Among the 64 percent who do have diplomas, only 38 percent have a computer science or math degree.

    The bipartisan immigration plan introduced last week by the so-called Gang of Eight senators would raise the number of H-1B visas, though it would limit the ability of outsourcing firms to have access to them. Tech companies such as Facebook and Microsoft have fought hard to distinguish themselves from these outsourcing companies, arguing that unlike firms such as Wipro, they’re looking for the best people, not just ones who will work for less.

    But some worry that the more H-1Bs allowed into the system, the more domestic workers get crowded out, resulting in what no one appears to want: fewer American students seeing much promise in entering STEM fields.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...459_story.html





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    Super Moderator imblest's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Motivated View Post
    Washington Post

    Basic dynamics of supply and demand would dictate that if there were a domestic labor shortage, wages should have risen. Instead, researchers found, they’ve been flat, with many Americans holding STEM degrees unable to enter the field and a sharply higher share of foreign workers taking jobs in the information technology industry. (IT jobs make up 59 percent of the STEM workforce, according to the study.)

    The answer to whether there is a shortage of such workers has important ramifications for the immigration bill. If it exists, then there’s an urgency that justifies allowing companies to bring more foreign workers into the country, usually on a short-term H-1B visa. But those who oppose such a policy argue that companies want more of these visas mainly because H-1B workers are paid an estimated 20 percent less than their American counterparts. Why allow these companies to hire more foreign workers for less, the critics argue, when there are plenty of Americans who are ready to work?

    This is am important study because it shows what many have known all along--that companies would prefer to hire low wage immigrants rather than American graduates. It is outrageous that Congress would even consider increasing the number of H-1Bs after seeing this study!
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    Here is a relevant link:

    Guestworkers in the high-skill U.S. labor marketAn analysis of supply, employment, and wage trends

    http://www.epi.org/publication/bp359...P9MtSE.twitter


    Here are some highlights (or low lights):

    Our examination of the IT labor market, guestworker flows, and the STEM education pipeline finds consistent and clear trends suggesting that the United States has more than a sufficient supply of workers available to work in STEM occupations:

    • The flow of U.S. students (citizens and permanent residents) into STEM fields has been strong over the past decade, and the number of U.S. graduates with STEM majors appears to be responsive to changes in employment levels and wages.
    • For every two students that U.S. colleges graduate with STEM degrees, only one is hired into a STEM job.
    • In computer and information science and in engineering, U.S. colleges graduate 50 percent more students than are hired into those fields each year; of the computer science graduates not entering the IT workforce, 32 percent say it is because IT jobs are unavailable, and 53 percent say they found better job opportunities outside of IT occupations. These responses suggest that the supply of graduates is substantially larger than the demand for them in industry.

    ​***

    The data also strongly suggest that there is a robust supply of domestic workers available for the IT industry:

    • The number of domestic STEM graduates has grown strongly, and many of these graduates could qualify for IT jobs.
    • The annual number of computer science graduates doubled between 1998 and 2004, and is currently over 50 percent higher than its 1998 level.

    At the same time, current U.S. high-skill immigration policy, which includes the granting of work permits to foreign students and the issuance of a variety of nonimmigrant guestworker visas, provides employers with large numbers of STEM guestworkers, most of whom are in IT occupations.

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    Super Moderator imblest's Avatar
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    Original article added to homepage with amended title--

    http://www.alipac.us/content.php?r=1...ates-after-all
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    Super Moderator imblest's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by imblest View Post
    This is am important study because it shows what many have known all along--that companies would prefer to hire low wage immigrants rather than American graduates. It is outrageous that Congress would even consider increasing the number of H-1Bs after seeing this study!
    It sure is totally outrageous! Beware Americans! All these politicians supporting immigration reform and amnesty under any code term do not care about you, your family, your kids or any other US citizen. They only care about appeasing the lobbyists representing foreign governments and multinational companies who are paying them to sell out American citizens. There's not much lower than low than to sell out an American Kid who has worked their butts off to earn a degree in a science, technical, engineering or math field, only to sell out their job to a foreign national with a green card or H1B visa.
    A Nation Without Borders Is Not A Nation - Ronald Reagan
    Save America, Deport Congress! - Judy

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