New Study Suggests No Shortage of American STEM Graduates

An anonymous reader writes "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.)"

Comments

obviously a lie then

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously the shortage is dreamed up by corporations attempting to justify importing cheap foreign labor.

Re:obviously a lie then

[TWiTfan]

But...but....but....all the politicians and CEO's say companies can't get Americans and need more H1B indentured servants. Surely they wouldn't lie to us, right?

Re:obviously a lie then

[Bigby]

I say give them the H1B workers. Those companies will be worse off because of it. I work with these guys and the quality suffers greatly. Some companies are smarter than to go that route. In many cases, 1 good non-H1B IT guy can do something 100 H1B workers can't. There are exceptions...

Whatever happened to the "you have to pay an H1B worker what you would pay a non-H1B worker"? And that you "have to prove you can't find a non-H1B worker"? Do they just say they can't find them because the price is too high? Do they pay a "contractor" the same rate as a non-H1B, which pays the H1B a very low rate, and gives a kickback to the company?

Re:obviously a lie then

[Anonymous Coward]

I say give them the H1B workers. Those companies will be worse off because of it. I work with these guys and the quality suffers greatly. Some companies are smarter than to go that route. In many cases, 1 good non-H1B IT guy can do something 100 H1B workers can't. There are exceptions...

Whatever happened to the "you have to pay an H1B worker what you would pay a non-H1B worker"? And that you "have to prove you can't find a non-H1B worker"? Do they just say they can't find them because the price is too high? Do they pay a "contractor" the same rate as a non-H1B, which pays the H1B a very low rate, and gives a kickback to the company?

The typical way it works goes like this:

1) Talk to the recruiting firm and locate the H1-B worker you want to hire
2) Figure out (or create) a very precise skill set for that worker
3) Tailor a job posting to those exact requirements
4) Post job in local newspaper and wait a few weeks
5) Legally disqualify 95% of the applicants that don't match those exact requirements
6) Call a few in for interviews that do come close to matching - then disqualify them for other made-up reasons (not a good fit for our culture is a good one)
7) Claim that you can't fill the job with native talent and hire H1-B worker at fraction of price you'd have to pay a native worker

Re:obviously a lie then

[ebno-10db]

I say give them the H1B workers. Those companies will be worse off because of it.

Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent.

Re:obviously a lie then

[DickBreath]

It's not a lie. There is a shortage. Seriously.

There is a serious shortage of American STEM graduates who will work for little to nothing.

We need more H1B's to correct this problem.

Re:obviously a lie then

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

That doesn't work as well as you think. Companies that import workers look for domestics as token hires to fend off trouble. The unemployment rate is so low they're a golden defensive shield.

Re:obviously a lie then

[bobwalt]

In addition, it is very easy to justify bringing in workers using H1b visas for existing employees from an offshore company site in say Asia. Thus a company can hire someone in another country then send them to the US to work then keep them in a company apartment and pay them very little. The employee is either very willing to come or has no choice in the matter. It is my feeling that H1b visas are not necessary. As to a decline in quality; people seem to be accepting that decline. I can think of many cases over the last few years where there have been gaping holes in quality control showing that testing was not performed with the same care and attention to detail as it had in the past.

Re:obviously a lie then

[Cigarra]

They would and they do lie, deal with it.

And don't call me Shirley.

Re:obviously a lie then

[Anonymous Coward]

The Department of Labor says about this:

“H-1B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker.”

Thus there is no reason to disqualify US workers. Just fire them and replace with H-1Bs. Perfectly legal.

Re:obviously a lie then

[flabordec]

I'm not sure where you are hiring, but my company interviews a lot of people and most of them have trouble doing basic programming tasks (for example, iterating an array). Just on phone interviews we weed out two out of three candidates. From the candidates that actually make it on site only about half have decent interviews on relatively basic data structure and algorithm questions.

Foreign interviewers don't fare much better, though. We basically attempt to interview as many people as possible so we get the few competent ones no matter where they are from.

When we do hire H1Bs, they are paid exactly the same as US citizens, which is more than the average for our city for equivalent positions. Of course, my company does care about the quality of our software; maybe if we didn't care and hired every idiot out of college we wouldn't have a shortage of engineers.

Re:obviously a lie then

[juancn]

For many companies, hiring is a matter of finding the best people they can (for whatever definition of best they have). Even if you have enough people graduating, the distribution is always the same, 50% are still below average. If you aim for top 5-10% (based on whatever criteria) then the market is a bitch. Even if you pay above average, it's still hard to get good people.

It's not just the technical qualifications, you have to also find a cultural match.

In my experience, most software companies hiring H1-B do so because by hiring abroad you have a larger pool of candidates to choose from, if you search several job markets at the same time you increase your chances of finding the profile you want. I'm sure there are many cases where this is not the case (incompetence, malice or whatever). But I cannot believe that price is the only driving factor.

Re:obviously a lie then

[BigDaveyL]

But most people congregate around the center, even if they are below average.

Re:obviously a lie then

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Or perhaps they take advantage of the fact that the rest of the world has a much larger population than the US alone, and therefore the selection of candidates who have the exact skill set or close enough to it that they want is much larger. So naturally, they'll seek H1-B workers.

One thing I've noticed when talking to employers is that many American IT workers demand ridiculous figures that nobody can afford (e.g. I want $150k per year even though what I can offer the company doesn't justify that wage rate) whereas H1-B workers will gladly work for what the average going rate for somebody of their talent.

Many on slashdot are, I'm sure, familiar with the concept that if you can't afford to pay a high price for something, then you'll simply do without it. Under the same reasoning, somebody isn't going to pay you the X amount per year that you demand when you'll bring in less than that to their company, there's just no point.

Re:obviously a lie then

[White Flame]

There's also a shortage of accomplished, senior STEM workers who can replace outgoing retirees and be brought on to expand teams. This is the effect of these same issues.

Re:obviously a lie then

[Tablizer]

There is a serious shortage of American STEM graduates who will work for little to nothing.

And under crappy conditions. I know one H-1B worker who was only paid once every six months. It was the full amount, but still it was late. He couldn't really do anything about it because he'd likely lose his job if he sued.

Re:obviously a lie then

[ncmathsadist]

This is exactly right. The American business establishment has been busting down wages furiously since the '70s. This accounts for a big chunk of the huge wealth transfer to the "top 1%". Business has used illegal immigrants from the third world to lower the wages of semi and unskilled workers to very low levels in real terms. They do the same thing by hiring people from India and Russia on H1Bs to lower the wages of tech workers. This is a naked scheme of exploitation that has been going on for a very long time. It is abetted by both political parties; said parties are amply lubricated for their troubles.

Re:obviously a lie then

[NewYork]

You should be actually worried about the creeping Caste system in America due to H1Bs from India.
Caste system is worse than terrorism. It's a slow poison that will destroy America.

Google "Check companies ruined or almost ruined by forward caste"

Re:obviously a lie then

[lsatenstein]

I say give them the H1B workers. Those companies will be worse off because of it. I work with these guys and the quality suffers greatly. Some companies are smarter than to go that route. In many cases, 1 good non-H1B IT guy can do something 100 H1B workers can't. There are exceptions...

Whatever happened to the "you have to pay an H1B worker what you would pay a non-H1B worker"? And that you "have to prove you can't find a non-H1B worker"? Do they just say they can't find them because the price is too high? Do they pay a "contractor" the same rate as a non-H1B, which pays the H1B a very low rate, and gives a kickback to the company?

The typical way it works goes like this:

1) Talk to the recruiting firm and locate the H1-B worker you want to hire
2) Figure out (or create) a very precise skill set for that worker
3) Tailor a job posting to those exact requirements
4) Post job in local newspaper and wait a few weeks
5) Legally disqualify 95% of the applicants that don't match those exact requirements
6) Call a few in for interviews that do come close to matching - then disqualify them for other made-up reasons (not a good fit for our culture is a good one)
7) Claim that you can't fill the job with native talent and hire H1-B worker at fraction of price you'd have to pay a native worker

There is no bargain. The H1B people I know are book smart, but lack experience. They work twice as slow as North Americans. After two years though they are caught up and then, they go home to use the skills for India, or from whereever they came. You are training other nationals to compete with you. STOP.

Employability

[eldavojohn]

This actual study itself has at least one very good point that may not be obvious to people: our leadership's drive to promote the idea of a STEM shortage is primarily to justify guestworkers and allow them to add provisions like OPT-STEM extensions. Don't get me wrong, there is a sort of shadow brain drain war going on here that for a long time the West had easily been winning. UK, Germany, USA, etc had been sucking up the talent from India, China, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, you name it we took the brightest from it. And it was really really easy. And now Western leaders are kind of getting uncomfortable because, well, it's not really working in our favor anymore. I care that our politicians are being deceiving about this concept but I don't care about the "taking our jobs." In fact, I'm one of those meritocratic boogeymen that thinks our borders should be open with nothing more than a background check into your criminal record before you're granted entrance to the United States. Sure, some other stuff would need to change but that's an entirely different argument I'm not going to get into.

The main point of this study, however, is what the Post picked up on and is being reiterated: there is no shortage of STEM workers here in the US. And while that's likely true, the study (though comprehensive) doesn't really seem to ever step up to the plate and look at STEM versus non-STEM in the cases of employability and what those industries do for our GDP. Our leaders like Obama are operating on the assumption that a surplus in STEM workers is better than a perfectly equalized workforce with zero unemployment. They're not going to say that but my guess is that they're getting uneasy that China is mandating how many STEM workers it will produce and limiting the number of liberal arts degrees. The West is now uneasy that they might start losing the STEM war and they're trying to figure out how to scare their populations into letting them selectively brain drain other countries. A fake "massive shortage of STEM workers" is pretty much their only card so far.

Re:Employability

[spiffmastercow]

In fact, I'm one of those meritocratic boogeymen that thinks our borders should be open with nothing more than a background check into your criminal record before you're granted entrance to the United States

TPTB would never allow it. If imported talent weren't tied to a sponsoring corporation, they would be free to better their lot through job movement and wages would rise.

Can't be having that.

I would say we should only have this arrangement with countries that agree to the same conditions. It's worked out well for the Commonwealth nations, and I don't see why it wouldn't work for us.

Re:Employability

[ebno-10db]

USA, etc had been sucking up the talent from India, China, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, you name it we took the brightest from it.

Maybe, but that doesn't mean that all, or even most, of the STEM people we "took" from those places are the best and the brightest. Nobody in the US opposes having the "best and the brightest" come here, but the vast majority are simply of average ability and recruited to reduce pay of people in the US.

I'm one of those meritocratic boogeymen that thinks our borders should be open with nothing more than a background check into your criminal record before you're granted entrance to the United States.

No problem. I think we should do that for STEM people as soon as we start doing it for doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc., eliminate sugar, ethanol, orange juice and other agricultural tariffs, and get rid of things like region coding and nabbing the elderly for buying their prescriptions in that third world hellhole of unsafe pharmaceuticals called "Canada".

The West is now uneasy that they might start losing the STEM war and they're trying to figure out how to scare their populations into letting them selectively brain drain other countries.

How do we "loose the STEM war"? Since the study makes clear (as have other studies, many done much earlier) that there is no shortage of STEM people in the US, the purpose of massive guest worker programs (e.g. H-1B) is to reduce the pay of people in the US. This has nothing to do with how "globally competitive" the US is, and everything to do with how the pie gets divided up here. The plutocracy doesn't like this whole "middle class" thing where many Americans make a decent living.

Re:Employability

[thomasw_lrd]

I'm truly curious about this. Don't the laws of supply and demand state that if the overall wage goes down, purchasing power goes down, and then prices must fall to match? I know this won't work in our current society of government mandated prices for commodities (through subsidies for farmers and such), but in a truly free market society would this not work?

Re:Employability

[0xdeadbeef]

I liked the part where you tricked us into reading your conspiracy theory. You should have a show on Fox.

Re:Employability

[ebno-10db]

Even if that does work accord to theory, it says nothing about distribution of income. One of the big failings of mainstream economic theory is that it endlessly addresses aggregate income, but says amazingly little about its distribution. If we doubled our GDP but redistributed it such that 99% of it went to the top 1%, would we have a "better economy"?

It's interesting that this lack of attention to distribution completely ignores one of the key principles of economics: diminishing marginal utility. An extra dollar is worth more to me than Zuckerberg, and an extra dollar is worth more to a minimum wage worker than to me.

Note to any trolls who may start screaming "commie": I'm not saying that everybody should earn the same income, or that nobody should be rich, or any other such straw men. I am saying that looking at GDP without looking at distribution is idiotic, and violates a prime tenet of both economics and common sense. In past decades (e.g. 1940's-1970's) we had a far less extreme income distribution and had faster economic growth than we do now. Not necessarily cause and effect (though there are some good arguments there) but it certainly demonstrates that extreme disparities aren't necessary for growth.

Re:Employability

[ebno-10db]

It's worked out well for the Commonwealth nations

It worked well for the Commonwealth countries because there was little opportunity for labor arbitrage.

Re:Employability

[ebno-10db]

Maybe the shortage is real, but only for high-IQ people?

How high is high? We could always use more Nobel prize winners.

Re:Employability

[Jane Q. Public]

"Nobody in the US opposes having the "best and the brightest" come here, but the vast majority are simply of average ability and recruited to reduce pay of people in the US."

I think you're referring to this study.

H1-B workers are not the "best and brightest" at all. They often did not compare well to native U.S. workers. Companies just wanted them because they were cheap.

Re:Employability

[ebno-10db]

IT hiring in the US is very focused on a few hotspots. Foreign workers seeking employment here of course expect to move to where the jobs are, but US graduates often only look locally.

So everybody should move to Silicon Valley? Might get a little crowded. Amongst the reasons many people are reluctant to move there is the absurd price of real estate. If having more people in SV is so important, why not change the zoning regulations so that the place can become an urban instead of a suburban area?

Re:Employability

[PRMan]

You want to limit immigrants because you don't want a majority of Americans bringing their third-world ideas of bribery and corruption over here all at once and turning the US into a third-world country all the faster (than our politicians are already trying to).

Re:Employability

[El Torico]

You nailed it. It's like the old joke, "A statistician can have his head in an oven and his feet in ice, and he will say that on average, he feels fine."

Re:Employability

[ebno-10db]

The other issue is maybe many, if not most, of these students actually do not know anything.

The average H-1B knows so much more? Many of them are grads (often new grads) from the same US universities that the Americans went to. And if anything, many foreign universities, even academically prestigious ones, seem to be less practically oriented than American schools.

Re:Employability

[sycodon]

You would have to see the wages drop across the whole economy, not just one segment.

H1B isn't about market forces except to the extend that they distort the market. Businesses can't get workers at the wages the want to pay (meet the market wages) so they subvert the market by bringing in works from outside the market to undermine it.

If they want to outsource, fine. Outsource and be up front about what you are doing. Don't be pussies about it and bring the outsource workers here and then pretend you are hiring domestic workers.

Re:Employability

[KZigurs]

Technically there is no shortage of Nobel prize winners. Every year there is a bunch of folks getting one.

Re:Employability

[lgw]

Nothing in Silly Valley is rational in any way. I moved there when I needed to in my career. I couldn't be more happy to have left! But you go where the jobs are, if you really want one.

Re:Employability

[happyhamster]

Another classic example of this is the story about the man who drowned in a pool of water whose average depth was 1 inch.

Re:Employability

[ZenBowman1]

With doctors and lawyers, a physical presence is a near-necessity (although this is less true today than 20 years ago even in those occupations). In STEM fields, physical presence is simply not that important. Consider that a vast majority of American servers today run Linux, written in Finland, or that virtually every streaming video service is based in some way on ffmpeg, written by a lone wolf superprogrammer in France. Software programmers can practice anywhere, provided they are capable of producing good software, physical distance is not a barrier. So it is possible to lose the STEM war, I think that the attractiveness of US colleges to intelligent people around the world (including from within the US) has been the main factor in keeping most of the global talent in the US. The immigration system is sort of a lottery, yeah you get the average dudes who "depress wages" but you also get the extremely talented people who start a lot of the companies. http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/04/25/40-largest-u-s-companies-founded-by-immigrants-or-their-children/

Re:Employability

[lee1026]

At current tax rates, that 1% in your scenario might pay so much in taxes that the 99% would still have more money then the status quo in post-tax and transfer terms.

(Assuming that this 1% gets taxed at the highest tax bracket for both state and federal, lives in high tax states (as current 1% tend to do), and continue to spend a good chunk of their money on property, which are subject to large taxes of their own)

Re:Employability

[ebno-10db]

With doctors and lawyers, a physical presence is a near-necessity (although this is less true today than 20 years ago even in those occupations). In STEM fields, physical presence is simply not that important.

That argument would be pertinent if this was about outsourcing. Since it's about guest workers coming into the US, it's irrelevant.

Re:Employability

[aztracker1]

I'm in the middle of changing jobs.. my job search was relatively quick as there are a lot of programmer positions open. The fact is that 8/10 are less than I'm willing to accept, and yet, still there's still lots of lowball positions out there. I was recently contacted about taking a position near Seattle, for quite a bit less than what I make in Phoenix... It costs about 15K/year more to live in Seattle than Phoenix, and 20-40K/year more to live in the SF Bay area. I'm happy to look at jobs in the hotter spots (Phoenix actually has a great pay:cost-of-living ratio), but only for better pay than the equivalent to what I make here... There's close to 0% unemployment for software development... the salaries being offered are still no more than what I was making at the end 1999. What this means is I am making a lot less today 3-5%/year for a 13 years.

From my experience, and those I've worked with, I'm well inside the top 1% of my peer group. Very few managers understand the difference in output from one developer vs. another if it meets the minimum requirements, and it means even less for contracted workers. I get the economics of it, it still doesn't correlate with any supposed shortage of workers, and that wages would go up if that were the case.

Re:Employability

[aztracker1]

Having a shortage of high-IQ people is laughable as IQ is derived from the average for a test group. 100 is average and probably 90% of people are within 10% above, or below depending on the test... the bell curve is pretty high. Falling outside this range is rare, and genius or retarded levels more rare. There will in general always be x% of geniuses in the population. The problem is raising the average population to higher levels, which simply isn't happening and our educational system seems ill-prepared to do. My great grandmother was a school teacher.. I once looked through some of her older course books. Her 5th grade english textbook was harder than anything I had to take in HS.

Communication (reading/writing) are the core of learning... if you can reason, read and write, you can learn anything else. We've drifted away from this. I've never been particularly good with language and grammar. I don't enjoy reading novels, I prefer technical books. That said, it's the single biggest shortcoming in current K-12 education in this country today. Basic math skills are nearly equally important... everything else, a young, curious mind can and will learn on their own.

Too much time is spent on things that are either becoming more intuitive or will change greatly. I would love to see K-4 spend about 1/3-1/2 their in-class time on reading/writing exercises. At the higher grades, around 3rd, introduce more math concepts, and in the HS age, then introduce more specialized choices. With the sheer size of schools in more urban/suburban areas, it would be great to actually segment children based on behavior and performance. You keep up, or get left behind... not "everyone is special" ... in the real world, there are winners and losers.

Re:Employability

[Medievalist]

I'm truly curious about this. Don't the laws of supply and demand state that if the overall wage goes down, purchasing power goes down, and then prices must fall to match? I know this won't work in our current society of government mandated prices for commodities (through subsidies for farmers and such), but in a truly free market society would this not work?

Truly free markets cycle endlessly between boom and bust, with people starving and staging revolts at regular intervals.

Re:Employability

[HeckRuler]

Assuming they pay taxes. And assuming that it goes on to help the 99%. But yeah, all in all it would probably help a little. I believe the term is "pittance".

Re:Employability

[lee1026]

Using your own links, top 1% pay 30% of their income in income tax alone. Add in 10%ish for payroll, another 10% for state and local, the rich would pay 50% in taxes. (which is more or less what they pay today).

Under your premise of doubling GDP, that means that tax revenue would equal today's GDP. In other words, you can improve the standard of living for the 99% by just using that sum. As to your concerns for the military spending everything, the vast majority of federal spending is on social security and medicare, which isn't exactly military spending. State and local spending tends to be dominated by education.

Again, this is mostly academic, as no one is proposing anything that will double GDP, but the point still stands that doubling GDP is nothing to be trifled with, even if you allow for completely absurd assumptions in the income distribution afterwards.

Re:Employability

[jythie]

You would have to see the wages drop across the whole economy, not just one segment.

This cuts to the heart of a lot of the problems with talking about economic effects of any particular change, the system is more complicated. Right now the only reason that outsourcing is profitable is because some companies do it while others do not, so they decrease their wages while hoping other companies keep their's high... so essentially you have the economic equivalent of the sheep buffer... it is mostly stable as long as most employers are not doing it, but the few who are get significant economic benefits. But as more and more do it, things get less stable since the burden of keeping a strong middle class falls on fewer and fewer industries. Same with the visa workers, it is profitable as long as not many companies or industries are doing it, but if it gets too pervasive your sales start dropping too.

Re:Employability

[ebno-10db]

the stinky rich countries come up with WTO and all the crap to tie down little and poor countries to transfer capital and resources whichever way they wish

As a citizen of a rich country I'd be more than happy to ditch the WTO and most of our trade agreements. They were created to help the plutocrats of both rich and poor countries, not the average person in either.

Capitalism and its underlying free market concept requires as a pre-condition the free movement of all means of production, i.e, labor included

Not at all. Capitalism, including "free trade", does not require the movement of either labor or capital across borders. In fact there are some very strong arguments against the unfettered flow of capital, in some cases from self proclaimed free traders. It often leads to panics and instability.

I do know the shortage is not made up from first hand experience. Here in the Silicon Valley a disproportionate number of kids (of friends and families of even STEM parents I know) are opting out of those areas.

How do you conclude from that that there is a shortage? If there was a shortage, presumably those kids would be more enticed to enter STEM because of rising salaries or at least low unemployment. Maybe the problem is that the kids who are smart enough to go into STEM aren't stupid enough to believe it's a good career choice anymore.

These studies are almost always pushing the "Patriotism" buttons of everyone

If that's true, please point to any "wrap yourself in the flag" rhetoric in the linked study or articles.

The buttons they're actually pressing are the "don't believe all this 'global village', and it's good for everyone" garbage. It's the same line that sold those onerous trade agreements that you rightly decry.

Re:Employability

[ebno-10db]

Truly free markets cycle endlessly between boom and bust, with people starving and staging revolts at regular intervals.

Just consider the revolts a market response to the famines and it all makes sense to an economist.

Re:Employability

[ebno-10db]

At current tax rates, that 1% in your scenario might pay so much in taxes that the 99% would still have more money then the status quo in post-tax and transfer terms.

"Might" and "if" are the most important words in your post. We also might have world peaces next year, but I'm not holding my breath. With capital gains rates capped at 15%, the average billionaire pays a lower marginal tax rate than I do. That does not bode well for your hypothesis.

Re:Employability

[Lonewolf666]

Don't get me wrong, there is a sort of shadow brain drain war going on here that for a long time the West had easily been winning. UK, Germany, USA, etc had been sucking up the talent from India, China, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, you name it we took the brightest from it. And it was really really easy. And now Western leaders are kind of getting uncomfortable because, well, it's not really working in our favor anymore.

That sounds overly dramatic to me. I think it is merely the market at work, with countries like India and China becoming a bit more wealthy and paying higher wages. That makes it less attractive for the people there to leave their country to work in the USA.

The West is now uneasy that they might start losing the STEM war and they're trying to figure out how to scare their populations into letting them selectively brain drain other countries. A fake "massive shortage of STEM workers" is pretty much their only card so far.

I observe the same in Germany. Trade associations keep moaning about a lack of STEM workers, which seems to be as real as in the USA. That is, not at all. But the politicians swallow it and have repeatedly lowered the wage threshold over which a non-EU foreigner can be hired as "highly qualified specialist" under easier immigration rules.

The success of this strategy is mixed. Several years ago, the administration of Cancellor Schroeder started a campaign to hire cheap STEM workers from India. The results were pretty meager, as the Indians usually preferred the USA for its higher wages and lower language barrier (an educated Indian usually speaks English, German not so much). What we get though are STEM workers from the former Eastern bloc. The company I work for has almost 50% Russians in R&D.

Re:Employability

[Jane Q. Public]

"I think we can safely conclude that that particular study is full of shit. In this case lower wages does not necessarily indicate less talent."

I think we can conclude that you didn't read the actual study.

They considered A LOT more than just salary. Some of the factors they considered were: salary, rate of patent production, Ph.D. dissertation awards, doctorates earned at top-ranked universities, and employment in R&D.

Re:Employability

[HeckRuler]

Bloody hell, did you even read that? Did you notice the part where it didn't pass? This was a proposal. We don't have a rule that tries to get the top 0.3% of the populace to pay at least 30% of their income to federal taxes. And so if they're rich enough to hire someone to hire an accountant (they are), they don't pay that rate. Are you aware that the top tax bracket is only 39.6%? That's for anyone making over $400,000. And remember that's a bracket. They're not taxed 39.6% on the first $400,000 dollars of income they make. The effective tax rate for a millionaire is ~35%. This was a proposed rule that would get them to pay at least 30%. It failed due to GOP opposition.

So how about you read that again and notice that the average effective tax rate (income+payroll) GOES DOWN as people make more than a million dollars. That millionaires pay a larger share than billionaires. (well, ok, 100xmillionaires). That the super-rich have had their tax rates drop way the fuck down. Now look me in the eye and tell me that if our nation somehow got twice as productive and for some reason the super-rich reaped all the benefit that it would be a "good thing". That it would be real economic growth. That you actually refuted anything that ebno said.

The proposal is named after Warren Buffett, who is appalled about how he can dance around the tax code. Come on dude.

Yes, your point stands. And I stand by my original standing by of it. Magically double the GDP and it would be a good thing. But if these trends continue I'd have a REAL hard time saying the outcome would be anywhere near the realm of what 99% of the populace would consider "fair".

Re:Employability

[lee1026]

My point is as the tax rate currently stands, it will be really, really, hard for the people at large to not benefit somehow from GDP doubling. The fact that the population would benefit doesn't mean that it is fair, but you can have an unfair situation that helps everyone. Whether it is "a good thing" probably depends on what the alternatives are and what precisely this world look like. For example, a world where a robot owning super rich gets all of the income, pays around half of it in taxes, and the taxes support the rest of the population to sit around comfortably and do nothing probably isn't too terrible. (at least from a fairness/hedonistic perspective)

That 39.6% you mentioned is just federal income tax. There is a whole lot of other taxes, not least state/local taxes. The 1% by and large tend to live in CA/NY/MA/IL, and state taxes will bring that up by a lot. If this hyper rich acts anything like the hyper rich of times past, they will also pay a rather large sum in property taxes.

The issue with marginal vs top tax bracket is purely academic in the situation that you posed - in a world where the 1% is making 198% of current US gdp, their income would be around 10-20 million dollar each. I don't think it matters too much what the tax is on the first 400K is in that world.

I am aware that the Buffett rule didn't actually pass, but I also noted that the discussion in the Buffett rule that it would raise a relatively small amount of money. Going by this graph:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Average_Tax_Rates_for_Selected_income_groups_Under_a_fixed_Income_Distribution,_1960-2010.jpg

It would appear that the superrich isn't actually that good at hiding their money, being taxed at something around 30% on the federal income tax.

Re:Employability

[Baldrson]

By advocating your "meritocracy" at the Federal level, you are imposing on the environment of other human subjects experimental treatments of their ecologies to which they did not consent.

You are, of course, free to test your causal hypothesis in human ecology (opening borders causes prosperity and happiness or whatever it is you value). Critically, however, to do so without allowing those who do not consent to your experimental treatment their own territory with perfect border continence -- the kind that can be achieved with appropriate defense investments (not the kind we see being made by the US overseas), is inhuman. As an inhuman being they may ethically treat you as a force of nature.

Re:Employability

[Ol Olsoc]

Truly free markets cycle endlessly between boom and bust, with people starving and staging revolts at regular intervals.

Indeed. If you look up recessions, you'll see that at least in the USA that a recession hit about every two years, lasted a couple years, then boomed, then repeated the process. It was very unstable

Most recessions we endured were the result of speculation. One was for banks refusing to pay in specie.

In recent years, we have done a better job, but the last decade, showed what can happen when you don't have much control over the people pulling the purse strings

The modern day Libertarians might do well to look at history and see what happens when we go back to the future.

Re:Employability

[breeze95]

I'm truly curious about this. Don't the laws of supply and demand state that if the overall wage goes down, purchasing power goes down, and then prices must fall to match? I know this won't work in our current society of government mandated prices for commodities (through subsidies for farmers and such), but in a truly free market society would this not work?

No. If wages goes down it is because supply of wage earners exceeds demand. Purchasing power of the individual may do down but total wages remain the same. Therefore, purchasing power of wage earners as a group remains the same. Since, total wages remain the same prices wouldn't fall. If prices fall then the system is experiencing a period of deflation and that is bad news for everyone.

Re:Employability

[thomasw_lrd]

Yeah, I realized, it was a stupid question.

Re:Employability

[MaskedSlacker]

It would appear that the superrich isn't actually that good at hiding their money, being taxed at something around 30% on the federal income tax.

Sloppy terminology in these discussions is what allows utter lies like this to appear to be truth.

The superrich DO NOT pay 30% of their income in taxes because their income is not wages. Their income is capital gains. The term "Federal Income Tax" is itself a lie. It's a "Federal Wage Tax."

Sloppy use of the term "income" allows both sides to be right while simultaneously lying.

Re:Employability

[Fastolfe]

There is a spectrum of competency among H1B workers just as there is among non-H1B workers. If you are a tech company trying to hire only the smartest candidates (without regard to H1B status), more H1B candidates means a larger pool of exceptional candidates. Don't think that a difference in "averages" says anything about people in the top percentiles.

Re:Employability

[Jane Q. Public]

"Don't think that a difference in "averages" says anything about people in the top percentiles."

The whole point was that relatively few of the H1-B workers were IN the top percentiles.

Companies have been claiming that we need more H1-B workers because the U.S. has not been creating enough of them. These studies show that excuse to be nothing but bullshit.

Re:Employability

[Jane Q. Public]

s / enough of them / enough competent tech workers

Re:Employability

[Jane Q. Public]

"All completely irrelevant, because foreigners are less likely to come from university recognized as "top-ranked" by Americans, or have any ties to US university to get a Ph.D there while working, or be involved in getting a US patent even if invention is mostlly his work."

This is a straw-man argument. Not only are those things not irrelevant, they are among the top reasons corporations claimed they needed H1-B workers: the claim has been that those workers are among the top in those metrics.

But the fact is, they are not.

Re:Employability

[HeckRuler]

and the taxes support the rest of the population to sit around comfortably and do nothing probably isn't too terrible.

A large swath of the poor, having their housing and food subsidized by taxes. Sure, they could just lay about doing nothing. Or they could spend all their time making art. Or they could spend all that free time getting an education online.

It's a romantic dream, but you should probably learn your history.

"STEM" is a useless grouping

[GGardner]

There's a huge difference in the job market for pure scientists (the "S" in STEM), and IT folks. The job market for someone with a PhD in, say Astronomy is terrible. Lumping these folks together with the legions of code hackers is ridiculous.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[BigDaveyL]

This is a valid point. Perhaps the numbers are a bit overstated. But, the point in the article is still valid to an extent. Companies complain that they can't fill their run of the mill jobs with graduates. Secondly, at a time when underemployment/unemployment is higher than usual, and wages are flat, one should not have a problem finding "qualified" canidates.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[i kan reed]

Yes, but people will perceive that distinction as goalpost moving. Let's be honest about what's happening here: we are moving into a post-worker society. The set of jobs that a computer+automated machinery can achieve is rapidly approaching the point where it surpasses average human capacity in almost every field.

And I don't mean this as a neo-luddite "computers are taking our jobs" kind of way, just that the set of skills that are unique to humanity are shrinking. We're running, as fast as we can, at a point where ownership of capital is the only factor for success in a free-market economy.

Globalization only compounds this fact, by making historically disenfranchised workers able to compete for the same shrinking set of valuable labor skills. We're headed back towards a 2-class society, and I don't like it.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[Zero__Kelvin]

So you are saying that we need more 3l33t Astronomers because the job market for them is terrible?

"Lumping these folks together with the legions of code hackers is ridiculous."

When you learn the difference between a Software Engineer and a "code hacker" you might be able to make an intelligent post. Until then, you are just another clueless guy without a job spitting out sour grapes because we don't need as many pie in the sky theorists as we do people who actually produce useful technology that solves today's problems.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[ShieldW0lf]

And I don't mean this as a neo-luddite "computers are taking our jobs" kind of way, just that the set of skills that are unique to humanity are shrinking. We're running, as fast as we can, at a point where ownership of capital is the only factor for success in a free-market economy.

That's when the blood begins to flow. And rightly so.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[i kan reed]

Unfortunately, I disagree with people who think a revolution will be a viable solution. Killing is one of the many things that computers are getting better at than us.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[gandhi_2]

It doesn't stop there.

The education industry has been foaming at the mouth for a buzzword to get behind, and STEM showed up and fell right into the trap.

Then the Arts people got involved. And now you have STEAM.

The idea behind concentrating on a few topics is being watered down until everything is included. Because inclusion is part of the self-esteem curriculum. And excluding anything is contrary to the anti-bullying curriculum.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[Shajenko42]

And then the elites put themselves into gated communities with automated turrets set to kill anything that moves within range.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[EmagGeek]

I think it's funny how Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math are all considered the "same thing" by the media that likes to talk about them, yet they don't lump "Physchology, Sociology, Social Work, and Humanities" together because they are "fundamentally different things deserving of their own categories."

Perhaps our problem is that we treat thes important things as this basket of "stuff" that is "all the same, and unimportant."

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[Zero__Kelvin]

Unless you are the OP, what makes you qualified to say what he was "just saying"? Nobody is "dismissing basic research", and you really should improve your reading comprehension skills.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[spiffmastercow]

So you are saying that we need more 3l33t Astronomers because the job market for them is terrible?

"Lumping these folks together with the legions of code hackers is ridiculous."

When you learn the difference between a Software Engineer and a "code hacker" you might be able to make an intelligent post. Until then, you are just another clueless guy without a job spitting out sour grapes because we don't need as many pie in the sky theorists as we do people who actually produce useful technology that solves today's problems.

I'd be willing to bet that someone with a PhD in astronomy could become a software engineer in a relatively short time... Maybe we should retrain our existing workforce instead of importing indentured servants?

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[Zero__Kelvin]

I totally agree that we should retrain, but having a PhD in Astronomy says almost nothing about that persons ability to become a competent software engineer. They are two completely different disciplines. Some would love it and be excellent at it, others would hate it and suck at it.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[Zero__Kelvin]

The point of the article is that there is no shortage. You are saying there is no shortage of Astronomers, and that there is no shortage of IT people, but that making the statement that there is no shortage of Astronomers or IT people (i.e. "lumping them together") is ridiculous. A graduate of middle school English could tell you that lumping them together is exactly what is called for in this case.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[spiffmastercow]

I totally agree that we should retrain, but having a PhD in Astronomy says almost nothing about that persons ability to become a competent software engineer. They are two completely different disciplines. Some would love it and be excellent at it, others would hate it and suck at it.

Generally speaking, someone with a PhD in Astronomy has done a fair amount of coding to implement their ideas. It's not far to go from scientific computing to Software Engineering, and in fact such a person would likely have a better math background than most of his fellow SEs.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[gatesstillborg]

Not sure there is that much difference, because those who started out as astronomers frequently end up in IT.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[Anonymous Coward]

I made it half way through grad school in astronomy/astrophysics, and many people in the field are already software engineers by using the tools for doing modern astronomy work (no one looks through eyepieces...) Overall, I found the critical thinking and logic abilities in astronomy to be higher than is typical among programmers I've worked with/managed. I think things like VB so lowered the bar to be a "software engineer" that the median ability in the field is pretty low. When I'm hiring, I consider hard science degrees in difficult fields combined with some practical programming experience to be at least as strong a resume as most CS/IT degrees and certs with equivalent experience.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[lgw]

Science and engineering require very different mindsets (there's a reason each looks down on the other). Sure, a great researcher could probably be a good developer, but the great researchers should be doing research! An average-or-below researcher might not be bringing much to the table for software engineering.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[0xdeadbeef]

A big difference in the market for the finished product, not much of one for the raw supply.

You can think of the sciences like game programming, where factors other than money motivate a surplus. It doesn't mean an unemployed scientist can't do something else "stemmy".

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[lgw]

, yet they don't lump "Physchology, Sociology, Social Work, and Humanities" together

Don't they call those "retail workers"?

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like the background to the diamond age. The rich live in massive archologies and settlements segregated by culture (Nippon vs New Atlantis vs Hindustan vs Heartland vs Han) and those who are not part of the tribes live on the scraps from up above (though those scraps are superior to many things that even middle class americans can get ahold of like food, medicine, and consumer goods)

Either Join a tribe or get stepped on, as that piece of science ficition is becoming science fact.
welcome to the future.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[Zero__Kelvin]

The reason you are having so much trouble understanding the discussion is that you don't know the difference between a software engineer and a programmer. The fact that you think that Visual Basic "lowered the bar" to be a software engineer makes this blatantly clear. Visual Basic has nothing to do with software engineering. In very rare cases a SE may include it in his or her design, but what you are doing is confusing a guy who hammers nails with an architect who can also use a hammer.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[Princeofcups]

And then the elites put themselves into gated communities with automated turrets set to kill anything that moves within range.

You mean castles with archers and moats? The image is quite appropriate.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[spiffmastercow]

I think creativity,problem solving, and math are the most important aspects of a good SE. Everything else can be learned pretty quickly. The basics of time complexity and data structures can be learned in a weekend. OOP/Design Patterns/SD Processes are something a new grad would still be learning anyway, and aren't terribly difficult. Tons of other skills are easy to learn as well. I'd like to know specifically what skills you think would require so much learning that it would be unfeasible to make the transition from hard science with programming experience to software engineering.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[Anonymous Coward]

Literally every programmer learns bad habits. This does not fundamentally change depending on what your degree is.

Programming has a very front-loaded difficulty curve. Once someone can think about state and keeping it logically consistent throughout the execution of a program, things like objects will come naturally to them.

The required math for a software engineer heavily depends on what he's working on, so a blanket statement like this is suspect.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[Shadow99_1]

In many real ways we are already in a economy where capital is the only success factor. Their are some great picture representations of this which show wealth by population percentile. They show the bottom 40% (in the us) share less than a percent of wealth and our `middle class` that middle 20% share about 4% of the wealth. The top 40% get the rest (and the lower half of that shares around 10%). All together that leaves the top 20% of the population with their oft quoted 80% of the countries wealth.

I`ve seen studies that follow movement between percentiles and it really says that outside a miarcle upward mobility is nonexistent. So capital really does decide your place in the economy, even now.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[EmagGeek]

You know what they say about the whole science vs. engineering debate. In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[HaZardman27]

Thank you for being a voice of reason in this sea of "I'm a scientist so I'm smarter than you and could easily do your job better than you."

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[Zero__Kelvin]

Thank you for thanking me ;-)

On Slashdot it is very easy to feel like the voice of reason in a sea of cluelessness, since by far and large the clueless tend to respond with fervor while the people who understand shy away for fear of being modded down (or some other reason.) It is refreshing to be reminded that I am not the only voice of reason in this thread.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[Anonymous Coward]

That's when the blood begins to flow. And rightly so.

And after the dust settles, you'll have a different set of overlords.

Better use the bloodless coup that is built into our democracy: agitate, run for office, vote.

Market economy is like fire: a good servant but a bad master. Maximizing the welfare of the nation is the objective, capitalism is one of the means. Where the means runs counter to the objective, you abandon it and choose better tools.

Instead of Iran and stiffer punishments for drug users, we should have our politicians debate game-theoretical macroeconomic models and vet them with the numerous Nobel laureates. The rules of the game should insentivize the indivudual to increase the common good. If that doesn't happen, you must tweak or overhaul the the rules.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[Shajenko42]

Essentially. I'd imagine they'd let us starve to death, and anyone who wasn't happy with that could embrace a hail of lead.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[ShieldW0lf]

I don't really believe democracy is going to survive unless those who are not able bodied members of the work force are forcibly disenfranchised. The elderly dramatically outnumber the young, and they hold most of the wealth. There have been multiple generations of less than replacement level reproduction, and all the politicians and business leaders recognize that the situation is desperate, that we aren't capable of surviving on our own, but if we brought in the number of immigrants necessary to make up for all the babies we didn't have, we couldn't force them to support our aged population once they got here. The nations we would like to poach people from are a) suffering the same problem b) recent converts to our culture who have no reason to flee here c) able to recognize what we're about and actively hostile towards us. When we as a culture decided it was acceptable to entice women to exchange the children a woman would bear for the service she could provide us in the hear and now, we really fucked ourselves. Unless a lot of old people vote to throw themselves on their sword, what's going to happen is we're going to fritter away resources making their end days as comfortable as possible, when they should be used to set the ship aright and ensure a future. We're also going to make enemies of those destined to inherit the world from us, trying to use economic and military force to compel them to serve us.

I think the sensible thing for an able bodied person to do is to attempt to migrate to a young and vibrant culture... I've been considering Brazil.

Re:"STEM" is a useless grouping

[mrchaotica]

You know how you tell the difference between engineers and non-engineers? Engineers are licensed. Until that happens for software, there is no such thing as a "software engineer" and no way to tell competent folks from Visual Basic idiots.

Wages are flat in the United States

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you're in the top end, your wages have been stagnating, your purchasing power has been decreasing, and your relative wealth has been degrading.

Disambiguation

[carou]

Why would we need so many people to work with Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopes anyway?

Stem shortage...

[wpiman]

of course it is a myth. It is just a ploy by large businesses to boost the H1B Visa program to increase the supply in order to push wages down.

Re:Stem shortage...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever hear the words 'hit the ground running'? That is why the demand for h1b is so high. They want people who do the job with 0 training. No one wants to train anymore. Companies used to have their own schools to train people. Now? Not so much.

Training is why no one wants to hire graduates. Before the .com days people did this same thing (I remember the reason I had no job for 6 months, I asked, no experience). The .com thing was an anomaly where there was so much demand and not enough supply. You could pretty much have 'seen a computer' and 'know a bit of html' and get a job. Now it has mostly returned to norms. Experience counts (but not too much as you will screw up the insurance pool).

Remember you buy cheap you get what you pay for. Sometimes you get good results. Most of the time...

Re:Stem shortage...

[BigDaveyL]

You couldn't be more incorrect.

Back 30 years ago when my parents graduated from College with math degrees, they had multiple job offers from big companies to do computer programming. They would get the necessary training to fill in any holes of knowledge they had.

Now, companies have given up on any sort of training programs like that.

Now companies want experience to get a job but you can't get a job without experience.

Re:Stem shortage...

[interval1066]

They want people who do the job with 0 training.

I'm in complete agreement with you. Interestingly however, in my experience the zero training aspect is a myth. The H1B people often require more training, exacerbated because they often speak little english.

Re:Stem shortage...

[Bigby]

There is no such thing as a shortage. And large businesses know that as they know what markets are. As you said, they just see the prices are too high, so they claim a shortage...which is all perception.

As an employee, I think there is a shortage of jobs, because they pay too low. We need to add more companies to compete with them. Again, perspective...

It is like here in North Jersey after Hurricane Sandy. There wasn't a gas shortage, because the price would just go up. But then the governor and laws prevented "price gouging" which then emptied all the gas at the stations and moved them into a black market. There was still plenty of gas, but now it was being hoarded or resold at market (higher) prices. Some viewed it as a shortage and it was hard not to when you forced a low price on it.

Re:Stem shortage...

[ebno-10db]

Ever hear the words 'hit the ground running'? That is why the demand for h1b is so high. They want people who do the job with 0 training.

Nonsense. Many H-1B's are recent grads. Your points about no training (for Americans) are dead on though. In many cases it isn't even formal training, but accepting that your new hire may take a month or two to get up to speed with the exact tools you're using.

Re:Stem shortage...

[VeriTea]

By the time training is available all the important development work has already been done and the companies that did it have collected the profit. Companies need the type of engineers that can do the development work and create new things. These engineers are the ones that are hard to find and in short supply. Engineers that need training to work on a new technology will always be late to the party and a dime a dozen (read: not that valuable and not hard to find).

The problem is that people are talking past each other. There are different classes of engineers. Class A, are the type that invent new things that haven't been done before. For this class a great engineer is worth 10x, 100x, 1000x that of an average engineer. You cannot train someone to be this type of engineer, they are rare and hard to find. The second type (Class B) are the 'turn-the-crank' type of people that work processes that were developed by someone else, or create a product that is a copy of an existing product from a different company. There is no shortage of this type of engineer, they are easy to find, or can be acquired by training a new hire.

Pointing to a large number of Class B engineers is not a refutation of the claim that there is a shortage of Class A engineers.

Re:Stem shortage...

[lgw]

Now companies want experience to get a job but you can't get a job without experience.

It's always been that way. That's why the most valuable thing you can get from college is your internships. Sadly, I didn't know that, so my first job was with a famously exploitive employer and paid the same as I was making delivering pizza. But many industries are like this: you take the suck job to break in. That's not a crisis.

Re:Stem shortage...

[PortHaven]

Seriously,

Most H1B visa holders are sub-par. Many have inflated resumes. And have done very little broad work or detailed work.

Many are employed to fill budgets in large mega contracts, often government related.

More than 80 percent of H-1B visa holders are approved to be hired at wages below those paid to American workers for comparable positions, according to EPI.

And because H-1B workers and green card applicants are locked into jobs with whatever employer sponsors their visa, they have less less leverage to push for raises and promotions.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/h1b-visa-bloomberg-foreign-workers-smarter

The US government OES office's data indicates that 90 percent of H-1B IT wages were below the median US wage for the same occupation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Duration_of_stay

Re:Stem shortage...

[BigDaveyL]

While I agree that internships are a good thing (tm), they may be one of the first things to get cut.

Re:Stem shortage...

[lgw]

Cut by whom? Companies love them because intern hires are the best hires, and interns you don't invite back are the cheapest possible bad hires.

Re:Stem shortage...

[BigDaveyL]

For example, during the dot-com bust, I could not find an internship because there was a lack of funding at several places. The place that I interned at the year before suspended their program temporarily.

Welcome to STEM Jeopardy

[phrackwulf]

I'll take, "Corporations prefer international young and desperate engineers they can lock into five or ten years of indentured servitude for much less money and minimal benefits for $500, Alex."

Re:Welcome to STEM Jeopardy

[VeriTea]

More like "Companies need highly talented engineers of which there are just too few to be had in the world and having 50 engineers of average talent for every position does nothing to help with the shortage."

Engineers are not widgets. A great engineer is worth 50 mediocre engineers.

Re:Welcome to STEM Jeopardy

[neminem]

Indeed. I'm sure corporations would *love* to lock young desperate engineers into five or ten years of indentured servitude for 500$. Generally it's at still at least a few tens of thousands, but I'm sure they'd love to change that. :p

Re:Welcome to STEM Jeopardy

[ebno-10db]

desperate engineers they can lock into five or ten years of indentured servitude

That's a ridiculous exaggeration. It's only three to six years.

Re:Welcome to STEM Jeopardy

[rollingcalf]

It can extend beyond 6 years with a pending green card application.

Re:Welcome to STEM Jeopardy

[aztracker1]

But rarely does a position for a great engineer pay even 25% more than what a similar position for a mediocre engineer does.

Re:Welcome to STEM Jeopardy

[VeriTea]

Sorry, nope. I manage engineers, and no amount of training will ever make an average engineer into an extraordinary engineer. See Reed Hasting's (Netflix CEO) philosophy of hiring and compensating, he hits the nail on the head. Netflix Hiring

Re:Welcome to STEM Jeopardy

[VeriTea]

Not in salary, but with equity grants (options, etc) in a successful company it can be 3x to 10x. I see it happen in Silicon Valley all the time.

Re:Welcome to STEM Jeopardy

[VeriTea]

Also, I'm not sure what makes you think that US engineers with the potential to be great are not in hot demand. Have you ever tried to hire a newly graduated BSEE from MIT? Yeah, I think not, because they are hot commodities due to their potential to become great engineers.

Correction:

[benjfowler]

There's no shortage of STEM graduates.

There's most _certainly_ a shortage of _cheap_ STEM graduates.

Re:Correction:

[interval1066]

When you come out of grad school owing 50K+ I wonder how cheap you'll be willing to work for. These H1B's, when they come over, I wonder how much in loans they owe? Does the Indian Government subsidize their sh*t? If so... well, there's yer problem.

Re:Correction:

[backslashdot]

OK I understand the part about the 50K debt .. BUT .. if you are on welfare how does the debt get paid off? Why not work for $60K or whatever it is that the H1B workers are getting paid? If you don't live extravagant, you can pay off $50K in debt on $60K in about 10 years .. so why is working for that amount bad? $60K is $40K per year more than what retail workers are getting paid. I mean, if it was up to me I think people who work the cash register at McDonald's should get paid $100K, and so do retail workers at walmart. Now that's the salary they deserve .. I mean you can't argue that a walmart worker is any less of a decent human being than a STEM graduate .. BUT .. the walmart worker is forced to work for the salary that the market demand and competition has determined the value of their work to be. Should a walmart worker resent the presence of other retail workers who are causing his wage to go down?

By the way, the average H1B at Cisco and certain other silicon valley high tech companies gets about $120K (I googled H1B salaries). The wages vary wildly according to location.

I'll sidetrack here .. Should a walmart worker resent the presence of other retail workers who are causing his wage to go down? No. Because the more workers we have the lower the costs of production are and that same walmart worker knows that their salary can go further due to the fact that there are so many other retail workers.

Re:Correction:

[lgw]

Arguably the reason US schools charge so much (ridiculous cost increases over the past 20 years, just insane) is government subsidies and loan guarantees. The government would help you borrow another $10K, and schools would immediately ratchet up tuition another $10K.

That bubble is bursting now, however, which is really going to suck for a few years until tuitions collapse back to something reasonable.

I still think universities should be able to charge only a percentage of what you make after graduation for a N years (or, better, a % of the difference between what you make and what the average retail worker makes - so if your degree only gets you a job at Starbucks, the university gets nothing).

Re:Correction:

[lightknight]

Well, of course there's a shortage of cheap STEM graduates! Your local business school is putting out 10x what your STEM schools are putting out, and as you know, the business people are 'idea' people who deal with abstractions....there simply aren't enough local programmers for every business grad with a me-too Facebook idea...so they'll get some from abroad! As a business major once told me, he can hire some Indian to write a program for him for lunch money, so why does he need me? Better keep my head down, and accept my lot in life.

So what if they've been caught lying through their teeth, and have possibly been single handedly responsible for killing the tech sector at home...they made some great short term gains that will no doubt keep them afloat in some foreign country while the rest of us suffer.

Re:Correction:

[interval1066]

I get how China is able to do it, trade surplus with the WORLD. They can pay for every Chinese national to go to higher education. I guess.

Re:Correction:

[benjfowler]

'Ideas people' suck. Anybody can come up with some idea and a half-baked business plan. It takes somebody unique and special to sift through umpteen different ideas and apply enough technical know-how and real-world experience and wisdom to build something that people want (and will pay for).

'Ideas people' dilettantes are a dime a dozen, and certainly the ones I've seen and heard of tend to be douchy Dunning-Krueger victims.

Yet, many geeks, when confronted with a potential 'business partner' business school grad, who wanst to make all the money, take all the credit and do none of the actual work, are too naive or polite to tell said parasites where to go.

Re:Correction:

[White Flame]

State universities' budgets have been increasing in "administrative" costs far beyond any other increase, uncorrelated to curriculum or facility expansion. That move is undeniably sponging income from increased loan amounts.

If universities were hurting from reduced subsidies, then their internal expenditures would not have risen in line with loan increases.

No New Workers is a Problem - College Hires

[Kagato]

I consult as a programmer. I work for large corporations and mid-cap companies. When I stated a LONG time ago it was pretty common to see college hires and interns in programming departments. Interns are extremely rare, and I haven't seen a college hire in a programming team in 6 years. Companies would rather hire "experienced" off-shore programmers. So the only pressure there is on wages is off-shore.

Since the quality of off-shore work is a bit suspect I make a lot of money (almost certainly too much) as the lead/architect that's keeping things together. If companies want to stop paying people like me too much money they should be hiring young (cheap) workers to put downward pressure on wages. That doesn't happen because it's seen as easier to just go off-shore.

That's not to say all off-shore programmers are bad. There are several eastern European/ec-Russian block states that produce high quality code. They happen to cost about 2X the wages of India Off-shore and carry some IP Protection baggage.

Re:No New Workers is a Problem - College Hires

[Bigby]

I complete agree with what you have. I just want to state that eastern European/Russian staff are FAR better than your typical Indian staff. They should be charging 10x the rate for 10x the productivity.

Re:No New Workers is a Problem - College Hires

[Kagato]

They have to be paid prevailing wage. Which is pretty easy to thwart. In particular when it's H1-B contractors. There are a lot of shell company games happening in that area that resulting in the workers getting paid very little. One of the interesting provisions in the H1-B expansion bill was a cap on the number (by percentage) of the H1-B workers in a company (30-40% of total employees). I'm dubious that the provision will make it to the final bill.

Re:No New Workers is a Problem - College Hires

[spiffmastercow]

If companies want to stop paying people like me too much money they should be hiring young (cheap) workers to put downward pressure on wages. That doesn't happen because it's seen as easier to just go off-shore.

Exactly what the company I work for did. Dumped the offshore workers and their appalling work and hired a ton of entry level developers mostly right out of college with low pay. The young devs are out the door as soon as they get 1-2 years of experience.

Did you try increasing their pay to match their increased productivity from their increased skillset?

Re:No New Workers is a Problem - College Hires

[aztracker1]

I'd like to see a $120K/year (top 10%) base salary floor for H1-B workers... if there *really* such a dire shortage, then that would be a prevailing salary.. with re-evaluation every 5 years to whatever the average pay of the top 85th percentile.

Re:No New Workers is a Problem - College Hires

[BigDaveyL]

Did you try increasing their pay to match their increased productivity from their increased skillset?

That would make too much sense.

People want to say that college grads will leave after a year or two once they get up to speed. The issue is that in that year or two, they probably have become underpaid because you've probably only given them 3-4% raises (if they are lucky). You might have to over pay them in the short term in order to recoup your investments.

Re:No New Workers is a Problem - College Hires

[BigDaveyL]

I agree. Problem is I could probably pay a H1B 1 standard deviation less than the average and still claim it's in the ball park when the government comes knocking

Re:No New Workers is a Problem - College Hires

[White Flame]

From my experience, the cultures from east Europe/Russia cannot abstract or design. As a general stereotype, they're very good at making something quickly but locked down and optimized. You're out of luck getting something maintainable, flexible, or in line with modern hardware/software architecture from there.

That said, on average my experience with them has been better than Indian staff as you say.

(Of course, for the stupidly oversensitive PC morons, generalized experience and stereotypes do not blanketly apply to any particular individual.)

Re:No New Workers is a Problem - College Hires

[Fastolfe]

This isn't necessarily representative of all companies trying to hire STEM people. I work at a large tech company and do a tremendous amount of interviewing. The problem is not finding people with STEM backgrounds, it's with finding good people with STEM backgrounds. While "good" is subjective, and the bar may be different for different companies, if my bar is set so high that I can't hire as many people as I want to, that's still a shortage in my opinion, and one that can be addressed by more STEM education and letting me hire more H1Bs. People can be cynical all they want about hiring cheap H1B workers, but you can't argue with the fact that allowing yourself access to more candidates means you can cherrypick more superstar workers.

The HR fantasy

[SirGarlon]

The single-minded pursuit of the best and the brightest candidates is a fool's errand. There are only a few of "the best" by definition, and they can work wherever they want. If you are not getting enough good applicants, it's because you are failing to attract them in the competitive marketplace. That may not (just) be because of salary, but also factors like where you're located and whether the work is interesting at all.

H1-B visas broaden the candidate pool but they won't change a company's competitive standing relative to others. "The best" are still going to go to the most attractive employers, and if that's not you, then I see two alternatives: either make your jobs more attractive somehow, or admit that what you really want are not "the best," but "the good enough."

Re:The HR fantasy

[BigDaveyL]

This couldn't be more true. You're job you have is most likely average, by definition.

Re:The HR fantasy

[interval1066]

You're job you have is most likely average, by definition.

Your English is less than average, by example. You just said "You are job have is most likely..."

No wonder companies don't want to hire natives.

Re:The HR fantasy

[VeriTea]

But now you have access to "the best" from around the world, not just the US. The US does not have a monopoly on the best minds.

The rest of the H1B imports are wasted. We should have a cap on the total number of H1Bs and they should be auctioned off to the highest bidders. That way companies who find a great hire can always get them if they need them, and companies who are looking for indentured servants will be priced out of the market.

Re:The HR fantasy

[Khashishi]

Err, you still want the best, even if you aren't going to get them.

Re:The HR fantasy

[White Flame]

Read again what he said. These companies do not have access to "the best", regardless of where they come from.

Suspect Logic

[Antipater]

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.)"

Wages will only rise if the labor supply decreases. The labor supply won't decrease if you import foreign workers.

In other words, your car will stop if you run out of gas. The car is still moving, so you must not be out of gas. Please kindly ignore the fact that you're rolling down a mountain.

Re:Suspect Logic

[dacullen]

So in others words BIG TECH wants the same illusion of free markets as BIG PHARMA, BIG TELECOM and BIG BANKING. They've figured out how to rig the market in ways that allow them to maximize profit and minimize the ability of customers and employees to employe market forces for real

The Same Would Hold Triple for Unskilled Labor

[Nova Express]

Why then have our political and business classes made the decision not to enforce immigration laws against an unchecked flow of illegal aliens from Mexico?

Re:The Same Would Hold Triple for Unskilled Labor

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Yah. We need to stop the flow of illegal STEM graduates from Mexico.

More meaningful study:

[lq_x_pl]

Separate S from T from E from M.

I studied E. Most of my former classmates are dutifully employed *posted from the job I had secured prior to graduating in 2011*.

What IS in short supply

[petes_PoV]

... are STEM graduates who are willing to work for the pittance most companies intend to pay. The shortage is of salaries, not candidates.

Re:What IS in short supply

[HeckRuler]

I wonder, is there a shortage of shmoozers and business suits that are willing to undercut the salaries of big corporate CEOs? You never really hear board member complaining about the lack of competition in business leaders. Indeed, we hear that without golden parachutes, massive salaries, obscene bonuses, and ludicrous stock options that they wouldn't be able to attract the talent they need.

Funny, that.

Supply and demand drives price

[sjbe]

There's no shortage of STEM graduates. There's most _certainly_ a shortage of _cheap_ STEM graduates.

If something is in short supply, prices tend to go up. If the market price for STEM graduates is relatively high compared with other professions, that is strong evidence that there is indeed a tight market for STEM graduates. If there was a surplus of STEM graduates, their wages would tend to fall. Market forces are pretty good at solving this problem. Stipulating for argument's sake your claim that STEM graduates are not cheap, then by definition they must be in relatively short supply.

Re:Supply and demand drives price

[Bigby]

This holds true for everything but politicians. 300M people in America could fill those jobs, yet some get paid $150k-$200k per year with lifetime benefits.

Re:Supply and demand drives price

[cellocgw]

If something is in short supply, prices tend to go up.

You may not have noticed, but every darn study there is points out that inflation-adjusted wages for nearly every lower and middle-class job has been flat or decreased for the last 30 years. There is no "supply and demand" response system in action. Heck, the place I work for increased their technical staff by over 30% in the very recent past -- a massive hiring effort -- but stuck obstinately to their target of paying 50th percentile wages.
There may be choices of where to work, but there is little to no variation (other than geographical) in salary offerings.

Re:Supply and demand drives price

[sjbe]

You may not have noticed, but every darn study there is points out that inflation-adjusted wages for nearly every lower and middle-class job has been flat or decreased for the last 30 years. There is no "supply and demand" response system in action.

You are making several errors in your argument. First, there has been considerable movement in the wages of certain professions relative to the job market as a whole. Second, if supply and demand is not working, you do not seem to have a credible alternative theory for why the most fundamental law of economics is not working. Since there are no legal wage controls in play, if wages are flat it is simply because the demand has not exceeded the supply. Because the economy is more global, workers are competing for wages with more people than ever before. At my company we bid against companies in the US, Mexico, China, Honduras and elsewhere and so we need labor rates that make us competitive. 20 years ago we could pay more (inflation adjusted) than we can today for the same job because we have to compete in a bigger market.

Heck, the place I work for increased their technical staff by over 30% in the very recent past -- a massive hiring effort -- but stuck obstinately to their target of paying 50th percentile wages.

Just because they hired more people does not mean the market rate for their services went up. Unless your technical staff was big enough to be a significant percentage of the market there is no reason they would have to pay higher than average wages or why they would drive the price up.

Re:Supply and demand drives price

[cellocgw]

Since there are no legal wage controls in play, if wages are flat it is simply because the demand has not exceeded the supply.

(emphasis mine).
That, in a nutshell, supports my position.

Re:Supply and demand drives price

[sjbe]

That, in a nutshell, supports my position.

Nice bit of wordsmithing while simultaneously missing the point. Perhaps intentionally missing the point.

There are no illegal wages controls in play either as far as we can tell. (you can't prove they don't exist because you can't prove a negative) Just because folks (perhaps rightly) don't like H1B visas or the fact that multiple tech companies are pushing for more of them doesn't make their actions illegal, nor does it make it a conspiracy. Yes they are trying to control wages. There is nothing illegal, immoral or fattening about that by itself. If it is affecting you directly it is ok to fight it with whatever means you have at your disposal but also recognize that the fact that your wages don't go endlessly up faster and faster probably isn't The Man trying to keep you down.

Frankly if tech workers are so bent out of shape over the number of visas being issued they have perfectly legal ways to fight the issue. Union formation, lobbying, changing employers, etc. The whole point of unions is to restrict the labor supply and drive up wages and working conditions. If you feel strongly about the issue go form a union and fight the companies you feel are trying to flood the labor market.

Re:Supply and demand drives price

[BVis]

Form a new union? In an at-will-employment state? Good luck with that. See you in the unemployment line.

easy fix: ONE small change to the H1B rules

[Anonymous Coward]

Allow an H1B visa holder to change jobs freely within the 6-year timeframe of their visa.

An employer would *have* to pay them a competitive salary to keep them from defecting to the competition. In that case, the employer would only willingly go through the hassle of justifying an H1B hire (we'd keep that requirement firmly in place, BTW) if there was a true need, not simply a desire to get an indentured serf on the cheap.

This would be good for everyone who's honest and upfront about their motives. It would only hurt sleazy employers who are falsely claiming a shortage of labor to underhandedly keep wages low.

Of course, the cynical part of me says it'll never happen.

And, for full disclosure: I started out as an H1B myself, and would have LOVED for the system to work like this...

Re:easy fix: ONE small change to the H1B rules

[ebno-10db]

Allow an H1B visa holder to change jobs freely within the 6-year timeframe of their visa.

You're missing the point: why do we need the program at all? Why fix something that isn't even necessary in the first place?

Re:easy fix: ONE small change to the H1B rules

[Anonymous Coward]

That's where my cynicism kicks in.

The protectionists want "no foreigners to compete against at all, period", and claim "there is no shortage".

The sleazebag employers want "cheap indentured foreigners to keep the uppity natives' salary down". And they claim a "big shortage".

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. My proposal would function in a self-regulating way, allowing the honest cases to happen, and removing the financial incentive from the dishonest ones, while giving everyone what they are asking for *at face value*. How do you know *for sure* I'm missing the point, and the program is *absolutely unnecessary* ? :)

Re:easy fix: ONE small change to the H1B rules

[VeriTea]

Solution: Set a cap for H1B visas and hold quarterly auctions where the visas go to the highest bidder. This way companies with a real need can always get a visa and the indentured servant body mills are priced out of the market.

Re:easy fix: ONE small change to the H1B rules

[julesh]

Allow an H1B visa holder to change jobs freely within the 6-year timeframe of their visa.

You're missing the point: why do we need the program at all? Why fix something that isn't even necessary in the first place?

Because if it worked as it was originally intended, allowing hiring of candidates with truly rare skills as and when they are needed from wherever in the world those candidates might be found, it would be a net asset to your country's economy without costing the existing citizens anything. Allowing it to be used to shortchange the existing citizens who are perfectly capable of filling the jobs but just want more money/better conditions/more training/whatever is a product of poor implementation, not something that was a bad idea in the first place.

Re:easy fix: ONE small change to the H1B rules

[ebno-10db]

Because if it worked as it was originally intended, allowing hiring of candidates with truly rare skills as and when they are needed from wherever in the world those candidates might be found

Before the H-1B there was no problem getting visas for people with truly rare skills. There is a whole alphabet soup of visa categories, like the 'O' series for truly exceptional people.

Re:easy fix: ONE small change to the H1B rules

[ebno-10db]

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Splitting the difference is often not the best way to arrive at the most accurate answer. If person A said 2+2=4 but person B said 2+2=5, would you split the difference? The answer is to look at the objective data. This study is but the latest one arriving at the conclusion that there is no STEM shortage. Where is a study from the pro-H-1B side that uses objective data to determine that there is a STEM shortage? Please cite if you know of any, but frankly I'm only interested in things that use objective data (DoL statistics, compensation, unemployment, etc.). The only pro-H-1B stuff I've ever read is tech billionaires and their sycophants saying "yeah, there's a shortage, trust us".

How do you know *for sure* I'm missing the point, and the program is *absolutely unnecessary* ?

For sure? The only things I'm for sure about are death and taxes. And what does "absolutely unnecessary" mean, that there's not one conceivable positive point about it? I never claimed that either, only that on balance it's undesirable, and the justifications for it are weak and don't have objective support. My argument for it being unnecessary, other than the objective data cited in this and other studies, is that for decades the US was the world's science and technology leader despite the fact that no one had even heard of the H-1B.

Re:easy fix: ONE small change to the H1B rules

[aztracker1]

Nice... that being salary bidding. EX: someone offering 120k/year for an H1B would get in before someone bidding 60K

Re:easy fix: ONE small change to the H1B rules

[aralin]

You are missing the point. Transfering to another employer on H1B is easy. The problem is with getting a green card. If you want one of those, you are tied to the employer who files for you. During the 2000-2008 years, this process took about 5-6 years, recently it is much faster, I was waiting 7 years for a GC. So you are pretty much stuck with the current employer unless you are willing to restart the process. Some of them even make you repay all the legal and other costs associated with GC, if you quit before 2 years from them incurring it.

Supply-and-demand

[MetricT]

There is indeed a profound shortage of STEM workers, in much the same sense that there is a profound shortage of 2014 Corvettes on sale for $10.

The past twenty years has been dominated by the MBA and the JD. The same people who demand outrageous salaries on the premise that they are indispensible, seemingly have a difficuly time understanding supply-and-demand when it applies to other people.

If you are capable of getting a degree in a STEM field, then you are likely more intelligent and rational than the average person. And an intelligent, rational person is less likely to commit to years of graduate work given the low salaries and job security that seem to be the norm. Why work and sweat so hard, when your CEO is just going to send your job to India so he can get his quarterly bonus.

When STEM grad students can expect $100k job offers out of the gate, and MBAâ(TM)s have to live with their parents to make ends meet, I bet our âoeshortageâ of STEM workers vanishes rather quickly.

(Have both a MBA and most of a Ph.D. in physics. Gave up the Ph.D. after I met brilliant people in my field who were in their 10th year as a postdoc and needing food stamps to make ends meet.)

Re:Supply-and-demand

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

H1B here and a PhD in Electrical Engineering (optics). Got a $115K job out of the gate, and in an unrelated area (mixed signal chip design) no less.

Destroying the High Wage Jobs

[JWW]

This report does effectively see what is going on. Its the continuing effort to destroy high wage jobs in the US because corporate interests do not want to pay high wages.

Manufacturing jobs have faced this over the past few decades. Middle management has faced this. Now the skilled technical worker is the target for wage lowering.

However, our Captains of Industry have lost the wisdom that Henry Ford had about making sure their employees can afford the things they make.

There is really a neo-feudalism being formulated right now with the CEOs and corporate officers and boards taking a huge chunk of the company money, and with the money changers on the other side skimming off the top as well. They fail to see that enriching and advancing the middle class is the best way to actually make more money in the future. Their current method is going to empty the tank for the engine of the economy and set us on a continuous downward spiral.

The key thing to fix this problem will be to have businesses move away from "Increase Shareholder Value" and back to "give the customer what they want."

This is what is so dangerous about the Hedge fund managers' desires to increase Apple dividend payments. Apple has a clear focus on giving the customer good products. Turning them into a shareholder value type of company will only lead to disaster.

Re:Destroying the High Wage Jobs

[ebno-10db]

how is Apple taking all of the mountains of money they earn and putting it into there massive bank account better than them paying a part of their money out to there shareholders as a dividend?

Not only is it not better, it's not even legal. There are limits to how much cash a company can keep on hand before it has to declare it as profit and pay taxes on it. Unfortunately, nobody enforces those silly tax laws anymore if your company is worth at least X billion dollars.

Re:Destroying the High Wage Jobs

[ebno-10db]

Why would any successful CEO want to "help" fat lazy welfare moms who refuse to work hard when they can instead take that profit and send it to places where people still work hard for a living, places like china and india.

Why would an intelligent shareholder be willing to pay an American CEO 400x as much as an average worker, when in the rest of the world (include Europe, Canada and Japan) they "only" earn 10x-20x as much?

Re:Destroying the High Wage Jobs

[SteffenM]

Because there's a difference in raking in the cash because you make a premium product and people are willing to pay for it, and selling your products at a premium so that you can pay back your investors.

One indicates the company is a market leader, the other indicates the company direction is beholden to a bunch of idiots with money who only want more of it.

Re:Destroying the High Wage Jobs

[Fastolfe]

Why would an intelligent shareholder be willing to pay an American CEO 400x as much as an average worker, when in the rest of the world (include Europe, Canada and Japan) they "only" earn 10x-20x as much?

If someone with proven CEO skills has a choice between companies, they're probably going to choose the one willing to pay 400x, leaving the one paying 10x-20x to take a risk on someone unproven. Even if it works out, and the cheaper CEO turns out to know what they're doing, how long are they going to stick around and work for your "intelligent" shareholders when his resume now puts him in the same league as the 400x CEOs?

Re:Oooh, a conspiracy!

[Frosty Piss]

Parent is a Troll.

Certainly there is a conspiracy, but there is nothing mysterious about it.

It is clearly advantageous for companies to hire people that will be happy with flat earnings and no job advancement opportunities, as well as fewer costs associated with the eventual lay-off.

People like to say H1Bs make the same wages as other IT folks, and this may well be true, but they do help keep wages flat, and their overall cost is less.

Should be shortage of quality STEM workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because a person has a STEM degree doesn't mean they are qualified to do the work. I work in the software industry and it has been impossible for us to find quality software engineers. Maybe that's a problem with our HR and recruiting but I highly doubt it that's the only issue. Most people we interview seems to look good on paper but once you start giving him a problem to solve, the person crumbles. And the people we do hire, all they are thinking about is when's my next promotion. When can I be the manager or the architect? What happen to the pride of just being good solid software engineer?

And I have to take offense for people saying that Indians and Asian are stealing all of their engineering jobs as stated by some readers in the Washington Post. A company will always try to hire the best and the brightest at the lowest cost. And if that means foreign workers then so be it.We are all part of global economy and if you want to compete, you better raise your game.

The initiative should not be to try get as many STEM graduates as possible but more STEM graduates that can compete at the world's level. There was a time when the US workers were a leader in the engineering and sciences.

Re:Should be shortage of quality STEM workers

[BigDaveyL]

I would agree, but the problem is that they make those of us who actually know what we are doing look bad.

Re:Should be shortage of quality STEM workers

[ebno-10db]

A company will always try to hire the best and the brightest at the lowest cost. And if that means foreign workers then so be it.We are all part of global economy

So we're now all part of the global economy, huh? Then we should definitely allow STEM guest workers, just as soon as we start doing it for doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc., eliminate sugar, ethanol, orange juice and other agricultural tariffs, and get rid of things like region coding and nabbing the elderly for buying their prescriptions in that third world hellhole of unsafe pharmaceuticals called "Canada".

if you want to compete, you better raise your game

So you're prepared to take a pay cut to be more competitive with your Indian counterparts? How noble of you.

There was a time when the US workers were a leader in the engineering and sciences.

There was also a time when there was a good economic incentive to become educated and work in STEM fields.

Re:Trained != competent

[darkwing_bmf]

Maybe corporations can start their own trade schools to get the candidates they want.

Re:credentials != capabilities

[EmagGeek]

I would have to agree, unfortunately. I gave up on the traditional hiring process years ago because it became nothing more than a contest to see who could bend the truth the farthest on their resume, and then bullshit their way through an interview the most convincingly.

I don't use resumes or cover letters or even my HR department in my hiring process. It's more of a "tap on the shoulder" thing.

Correlation with wages?

[tanujt]

I don't know if it's a good strategy to deduce from flat wages that there isn't a shortage in supply of STEM workers. In fact, it is more than likely that the 'replacement STEM workers' for Americans (i.e., immigrant workers) come cheaper. If there is a 'market force' of labor shortage, which brings wages up, there's a counteracting force of 'cheap labour', which brings the wages back to where they were. Essentially, if you pick 'wage behavior' and 'number of employments' as your two metrics for deducing something, you may be underestimating the dimensionality of your 'state-space'.

After looking at EPI's paper, the wages graphs vary around in an errorbar of about 100%, which is incidentally how much the number of employees graphs vary, too. Without actual errorbars, correlating two quantities with a similar-looking 'statistical spread' would lead to an underestimated total (or propagated error).

Re:Not all STEMs are the same

[BigDaveyL]

Here's the problem with this analysis. It assumes that there's no skills transfer and that human beings are static and can't learn new things when given the proper resources. For example, is there any good reason why someone who programmed in Java can't pick up C#? Or, why are many CS classes have pencil-and-paper assignments. For example, an algorithm/data structure class is highly conceptual since a Binary Tree is conceptually the same regardless of what I implement it in - If I understand the theory I should be able to pick up syntax rather quick. The ability to think through problems should be the emphasis.

Secondly, wage is not a red herring. Many of us are contacted by Managers/HR/3rd party recruiters/etc. for jobs that may offer you a joke of a salary increase (i.e. why would I move to $BIGCITY with a family for a $5k increase in salary for basically the same job).

of course not

[WillyWanker]

But it's obvious the foreign workers are willing to work for lower wages and benefits compared to US workers, which is why big corporations are pushing so hard to increase the visa limits. Why pay an American 50K a year for an IT job with medical, dental, vacation and sick pay when you can pay a foreigner $20K a year with no benefits?

There is no shortage of STEM workers. There is though a shortage of STEM workers that are willing to work for barely above minimum wage.

Re:of course not

[PortHaven]

Well, it's really more akin to paying $40,000 with no benefits versus $70,000 with benefits.

Re:Oooh, a conspiracy!

[ebno-10db]

Did they do it from the grassy knoll?

Do you have a point? Perhaps you could even explain why you think the OP's point is wrong, or what your alternative explanation is. For a really tough assignment, find some objective evidence that says there really is a STEM shortage. Hint: tech billionaires saying "trust us, there's a shortage" is not objective evidence.

Definition of shortage -- more may still be better

[dlenmn]

I think this is best summed up by the following short post at Marginal Revolution (an excellent economics blog):

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/04/is-there-a-shortage-of-stem-workers-in-the-united-states.html

It comes down to the definition of shortage. The standard economics definition of a shortage is when supply does not meet demand. The paper shows that the supply of STEM workers does seem to meet demand for them.

However, it could well be that we'd be better off if there were more STEM workers -- driven by higher demand for them. That is not addressed by this paper, and this definition (that more resources allocated to STEM would be better) is a fine definition for a shortage.

That's the underlying issue.

Microsoft lied to us?

[zeroryoko1974]

Microsoft lied to us so they could hire foreigners at a lower cost then American workers? How can this be!

Shortages???

[litehacksaur111]

Why are people always talking about STEM shortages, but not the shortages in doctors or pharmacists? Corporations always lobby to increase the H1B quota, but you will never see anyone lobbying that we need to bring in more doctors or pharmacists to lower the cost of medical care. The reason I believe is quite simple: The American Medical Association and National Pharmacists Association are very strong unions. They even lobby against increasing seats in US medical colleges and even building more colleges. However, whenever someone talks about trying to form a union for IT developers or Engineers, we call it socialism, nazism, communism. Seriously, we have been saying for the past 10 years after NAFTA and other free trade agreements that only the "low skill" manual laborers will suffer. Well, now they have destroyed the market for manual labor and the corporations are coming for engineers, IT, and scientists wages. The only way we can fight this is if we stand together. This is not about Xenophobia. I myself am an immigrant from India. We need to ensure fair pay and benefits for domestic workers.

Re:Shortages???

[TubeSteak]

but you will never see anyone lobbying that we need to bring in more doctors or pharmacists to lower the cost of medical care. The reason I believe is quite simple: The American Medical Association and National Pharmacists Association are very strong unions. They even lobby against increasing seats in US medical colleges and even building more colleges.

Not only is that not the problem, but the problem is 180 degrees opposite of what you're saying
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324096404578356544137516914.html

U.S. medical schools are expanding to meet an expected need for more doctors due to the federal health law. With at least 12 new schools opening and existing ones growing, enrollment is on track to produce 5,000 more graduates a year by 2019.

But medical educators are cautioning that those efforts won't do anything to alleviate a doctor shortage unless the number of medical residency positions rises as well. The number of federally funded residencies has been frozen since 1997.

Medicare-funded spots were frozen under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and numerous bills to lift the cap have stagnated in Congress amid budget-cutting concerns, including proposals to slash Medicare funding for doctor training.

We're graduating plenty of doctors, but it doesn't matter if they can't all find somewhere to finish their training after 4 years of medical school.

For some reason, the free market doesn't seem to be dealing with this.

Re:Shortages???

[ebno-10db]

I'd love to add something, but you've described the issue so accurately and succinctly that I can't think of anything.

Re:Shortages???

[Sentrion]

Then we need to act more like the AMA and NPA. Highlight recent disasters, like the fertilizer explosion in West, TX, even though foreign educated engineers probably weren't involved, emphasize how crucial it is that STEM majors study at accredited schools located within our borders where we can have better control over the quality of education provided. Then emphasize how important it is that only the brightest candidates be permitted to study STEM topics. Then implement strict licensing requirements so that no engineer, programmer, scientist, or mathematician can do their job without jumping through a series of hoops. And make it so you need a graduate level STEM degree and a two year "residency" working 120 hours each week for chump change to make sure that only those who eat, breathe, and dream of STEM subject matter actually pursue this career path.

Re:Shortages???

[aztracker1]

I'd be in favor of a well organized guild for software developers... not strictly a Union per-se, but a guild that binds together similar to a union, but seniority in status is not based strictly on years in the guild.

Re:Shortages???

[litehacksaur111]

You cited examples of foreign medical school gradates trying to enter the US just for residency. That does nothing to increase the number of schools in the US or the residency spots in the US. To Summarize: People are going abroad to study medicine, but are then trying to compete against US medical school students for residency spots. How the hell does that make any sense?

Robots+money are taking over

[AndreyFilippov]

I believe that the decreasing demand for STEM educated people and the desire to get only "the brightest" is just another indication that the robots are taking over the engineering/IT jobs too. In the past each leading engineer needed a bunch of average ones who would do routine work (and learn in the process) on the design of the Master. Now "the brightest" can just use more of the CAD tools, so it is not just the uneducated low-paying jobs that are eliminated by the "robots", they are coming for our jobs also.

Re:Robots+money are taking over

[ShoulderOfOrion]

Wow. Wish I had mod points.Yours is one of those rare 'forest, not trees' posts. With decent grammar and spelling to boot.

This issue is closely related to some of the other posters who state that the issue is the lack of 'smart STEM graduates', or those commentators who are writing about the inability to find qualified job applicants. The reality is that the STEM world needs two kinds of workers today: cheap replaceable drones who can code reams of Java from a specification, and really sharp engineers who can design a new smart phone with twice the battery life, four times the screen resolution, and half the BOM cost as the previous version. For everything in between, there is a tool that can probably do the job better and with less cost than the 'average' engineer that would have been hired in years past.

The is the REAL reason why there's both a demand for cheap H1-B labor and a 'STEM shortage' at the same time.

Re:Oooh, a conspiracy!

[sjbe]

Parent is a Troll.

Whooosh!!!!! Feeling a little humor impaired today? Apparently I didn't make the joke ridiculous enough for you to get it.

Certainly there is a conspiracy, but there is nothing mysterious about it.

A conspiracy is (by definition) an agreement between two or more people to commit a crime in the future. The only way this is a conspiracy is if they somehow were contemplating committing a crime. It is not remotely clear that anything illegal is occurring. No crime contemplated = no conspiracy. (I'm not judging the ethics, just the legality here) At most it *might* be collusion though proving it in a court of law would be extremely difficult.

People like to say H1Bs make the same wages as other IT folks, and this may well be true, but they do help keep wages flat, and their overall cost is less.

No argument but this does not make it a conspiracy.

Re:Not all STEMs are the same

[VeriTea]

No, the problem with your analysis is that you assume that you can take any "Engineer Widget (tm)" and with training make it just as creative, inventive, and brilliant as Steve Jobs. You can't. There are great engineers and there are mediocre engineers. Retraining just gives you more of the mediocre kind. What we are limited by is the number of great engineers (that are worth 10x, 100x, or even 1000x a mediocre engineer).

Re:credentials != capabilities

[Saethan]

This is an issue at our company - we have a number of open positions for PAs, the problem is the applicants we get are mostly people who think they know a lot more than they really do.

It's why we need

[kilodelta]

To curtail the H1B visa program. Our jobs have been STOLEN from us by our legislators and big corporate interests. It's time we get them back.

Re:It's why we need

[stenvar]

If the US attracts American workers to STEM fields by paying higher salaries, the net effect will be fewer of those jobs, as companies move jobs overseas where the salaries are lower.

Re:It's why we need

[ebno-10db]

If the US attracts American workers to STEM fields by paying higher salaries, the net effect will be fewer of those jobs, as companies move jobs overseas where the salaries are lower.

Assuming that the exchange value of the US dollar remains constant. You've written the standard "you've got to work cheaper to be globally competitive" line. Even if it's true, that doesn't mean US salaries should go down, it means that the exchange rate for the USD should go down. We have a persistent trade deficit, and the only reason it's not as bad as a few years ago is that the economy is in the toilet. A lower exchange value for the dollar would fix the trade deficit.

Oops, that approach might mean that the plutocrats' incomes might not increase as fast relative to the middle class. The finance industry in particular just loves the "strong" (i.e. uncompetitive) dollar. Look at the origin of our strong dollar policy w/ Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in the 90's. You know Bobby, the guy who returned to Wall Street and made a fortune helping to drive Citibank into the ground.

Re:It's why we need

[stenvar]

Even if it's true, that doesn't mean US salaries should go down, it means that the exchange rate for the USD should go down. We have a persistent trade deficit, and the only reason it's not as bad as a few years ago is that the economy is in the toilet. A lower exchange value for the dollar would fix the trade deficit.

Yeah, and what a better way of ensuring American prosperity than effectively giving everybody a 30% paycut! If we keep doing that, soon we might reach the glorious level of prosperity of the French, or if we really try, the Cubans!

Look at the origin of our strong dollar policy w/ Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in the 90's

Democrats and Republicans both share in the delusion that they can actually make policy. Well, I admit they can to the degree that they can destroy confidence in the US government and the US economy, and that would, I suppose, make the dollar "weak" as a side-effect, but not in a good way.

Re:It's why we need

[ebno-10db]

what a better way of ensuring American prosperity than effectively giving everybody a 30% paycut! If we keep doing that, soon we might reach the glorious level of prosperity of the French

This is bizarre. You think the French are an example of an impoverished people? Or do you just think that "Freedom Fries" were a good idea? And in the context of currency valuations, why would you pick a country that doesn't even have it's own currency?

You're 30% is also laughable. Do you think you can make a scary argument by pulling an absurd number out of your posterior? Do you think anyone will believe that's the result of calculation or estimate?

Moreover, how do you think we're ever going to pay our foreign debts if they keep increasing because of the trade deficit? Are you of the impression that foreigners will just let us live beyond our means forever because they enjoy lending us money, or because they like us so much that they don't care about having it repaid?

Re:It's why we need

[stenvar]

You think the French are an example of an impoverished people?

Not in absolute terms, but they certainly are a lot poorer than we are.

You're 30% is also laughable. Do you think you can make a scary argument by pulling an absurd number out of your posterior? Do you think anyone will believe that's the result of calculation or estimate?

Actually, it's a pretty conservative estimate; if Chinese and European imports double in price (which is what any significant devaluation of the US dollar means), that's roughly like a 30% pay cut for everybody in the US, even if the economy doesn't tank. If it does, it just gets worse.

Moreover, how do you think we're ever going to pay our foreign debts if they keep increasing because of the trade deficit?

People are going to let us borrow as long as they believe they can get the money back, and neither the absolute value of our currency nor the rate of inflation make any significant difference in the long term. The only two ways of stopping borrowing is to (1) stop borrowing, or (2) screw up our economy so badly that the rest of the world doesn't trust us anymore.

Re:It's why we need

[ebno-10db]

if Chinese and European imports double in price (which is what any significant devaluation of the US dollar means)

Please cite the source of the information that devaluations of less than 2:1 are not significant. I hope you're not a currency trader. Changes of 20-30% are considered very significant in trade discussions. I gotta love the circularity of trying to defend one number that you obviously pulled out of your posterior with another number so calculated.

that's roughly like a 30% pay cut for everybody in the US

And you get the arithmetic wrong! Our imports are about 15%/GDP, so even something ridiculous like a 2:1 exchange rate devaluation would yield at most a change of half of what you said (not that anybody who knows anything about trade and currency values would think 2:1 is anything but absurd). Moreover, due to import substitution, the actual change in effective compensation would be less.

neither the absolute value of our currency nor the rate of inflation make any significant difference in the long term

First, there is no such thing as the "absolute value" of a currency. But if you mean the exchange rate. then your statement is the trade economics equivalent of 2+2=5. Exchange rates (and inflation which changes the real exchange rate) don't affect trade? Wanna buy a car made in Japan if the yen/dollar doubles?

The only two ways of stopping borrowing is to (1) stop borrowing

Which, since we're talking about foreign debt, means by virtue of a simple and undisputed accounting identity that the trade deficit disappears. No kidding - that's what I was talking about.

Re:It's why we need

[stenvar]

Please cite the source of the information that devaluations of less than 2:1 are not significant.

You started this thread with the fairy tale that American ills are due to imports and a "strong dollar". As soon as you flesh out that fairy tale with some data and economic theory, then I can tell you more specifically where your errors are.

First, there is no such thing as the "absolute value" of a currency. But if you mean the exchange rate. then your statement is the trade economics equivalent of 2+2=5. Exchange rates (and inflation which changes the real exchange rate) don't affect trade? Wanna buy a car made in Japan if the yen/dollar doubles?

Probably the reason why you fail to understand the second point is because you don't even understand what the term "absolute value" (as opposed to "relative value") means in science. Trade in the world doesn't depend on the absolute (or nominal) value of currencies. You can add a zero to every currency in the world and nothing happens. In order to make any kind of change, you have to change the relative value of currency, the exchange rates, differently between different countries.

Which, since we're talking about foreign debt, means by virtue of a simple and undisputed accounting identity that the trade deficit disappears. No kidding - that's what I was talking about.

"Trade deficits" (i.e., exchanging goods for promises of future repayment) don't "disappear" just because you use different numbers to write them down. Short term, you can get rid of some old debt by inflating it away, but then people will either write contracts taking into account the new level of inflation and the new exchange rates, or they write contracts that require future repayment in something other than US currency. The only way you can get people not to exchange goods for promises of future repayment is to screw up trust, political stability, and the economy so badly that others don't believe they will get repaid in the future.

Re:It's why we need

[meta-monkey]

We need lobbyists.

Re:It's why we need

[kilodelta]

Sort of true when you consider that you have to fight fire with fire.

Re:Oooh, a conspiracy!

[ebno-10db]

The only way this is a conspiracy is if they somehow were contemplating committing a crime.

No, that's the way criminal lawyers define it for their purposes. In plain English the definition is much broader.

data

[ggwood]

You can find the breakdown of degrees by area in the US from:

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_286.asp

You can find estimates of initial unemployment rates after getting a college degree, and expected earnings from:

http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/Unemployment.Final.update1.pdf

If anyone knows more links to other data sets, I would be very interested. I want to provide my students with the best data available.

If you are interested in physics, the American Institute of Physics (aip.org) under "Physics Resources", "Statistical Research" has a huge amount of data - if anyone has similar data for other STEM majors (actually, for any major) I'm interested.

Re:data

[ggwood]

Here is the quick summary of the historical trends by major:
From 1970 until 2010, US population grew by about a third. However, the number of bachelor's degrees granted doubled. This is reasonable - we have a more knowledge driven economy.
There were about 52 thousand engineering and computer degrees per year around 1970. By 2010, this number is about 120 thousand - so that more then doubled. Much of this is related to computer science/information degrees (not surprising). Engineering increased but failed to double.

Math/statistics degrees decreased from about 25 thousand per year to 15 thousand per year. That might be concerning.

Physical science degrees (mostly chemistry, some geology and physics) were unchanged: about 21 thousand per year up to about 23 thousand per year. That might not sound great.

Education degrees fell from 176 thousand per year to 101 thousand per year. Ya, that is probably not good.

So what boomed? Business degrees. From 115 thousand per year in 1970 up to 358 thousand per year in 2010, which is about 22% of all degrees granted. And if you look at salary and unemployment, they do not do too bad - about on par with life science majors; better than most majors.

After business degrees, social science degrees are the next largest category, but the raw number granted per year (from 1970 to 2010) did not grow very much.

Health care related degrees, performing arts and psychology also more then doubled.

Balderdash

[ThatsNotPudding]

I want my baristas to know string theory or how to rationalize a database, not some horseshit about Renaissance art! STEM! STEM! STEM! VENTI

STEM workers vs STEM understanding people

[Xorlium]

I don't know if there are too many STEM workers, but there is definitely a huge shortage of understanding of science and math in the general population...

Re:STEM workers vs STEM understanding people

[loneDreamer]

That! The article seems to completely ignore quality separate from quantity. Let me quote:

"The data also show that there are multiple routes into IT employment, most of which do not require a STEM degree:

Only about a third of the IT workforce has an IT-related college degree.
36 percent of IT workers do not hold a college degree at all.
Only 24 percent of IT workers have a four-year computer science or math degree."

Their conclusion: there is supply! Also, they say that enough people are graduating from STEM degrees, but they don't seem to consider that a lot of the people graduating from those institutions are not US citizens and WILL become H1Bs. I'm currently in a top-level graduate CS degree and 100% of the students are foreigners (yes, 100%, pretty amazing)

I have no idea if there is actually a shortage or not. It is really hard to tell when everyone seems to be pushing their own angle and making gross assumptions.

Re:Not all STEMs are the same

[BigDaveyL]

I get what you are saying. But the problem is many companies do not want to pay what it takes to keep "Great Engineers (tm)."

Re:Oooh, a conspiracy!

[lightknight]

Indeed. Grandparent suffers from a common misunderstanding, that is, if it's a conspiracy, it cannot be happening.

Re:Oooh, a conspiracy!

[julesh]

A conspiracy is (by definition) an agreement between two or more people to commit a crime in the future.

Your definition disagrees with mine:

3 fig. Union or combination (of persons or things) for one end or purpose; harmonious action or effort

(OED 4th Edition)

Even if we confine the discussion to legal defintions, they vary from place to place. Here's OED's second defintion, which is tagged as relating to law:

2.a (with a and pl.) A combination of persons for an evil or unlawful purpose; an agreement between two or more persons to do something criminal, illegal, or reprehensible (especially in relation to treason, sedition, or murder); a plot.

So even in this definition, the act need only be reprehensible and not strictly illegal to qualify.

Re: meritocracy and backrgound investigatios

[NickGnome]

"In fact, I'm one of those meritocratic boogeymen that thinks our borders should be open with nothing more than a background check into your criminal record before you're granted entrance to the United States"
...

Meritocracy would be a big improvement, but the execs (business and academia) have been resisting that mightily. They don't want any solid, objective, enforceable minimal (intelligence, knowledge, work experience...) standards for the low-skill E-3, H-1B, J, and L visas for cheap, young, pliant labor with flexible ethics.

None of the cheap labor crowd want proper background investigations of visa applicants. A lot of politicians think it's wunnnnderful that the US government has signed onto "visa waiver" pacts.

While reading the EPI report Low-skill H-1B guest-workers in the US STEM job market I was prompted to dig up the latest DoS statistics. 135,991 H-1B (including the H-1B1s set aside for Chile and Singapore) were issued through consular offices in FY2012 (so much for all the propaganda of an annual limit of 65K or 85K). My main complaint with the EPI report is that they fail to include a precise definition of "IT work-force" and "IT occupations" that they're using, though they talk around it a bit.

salaries can't rise

[stenvar]

The US competes against other nations. STEM salaries in the US can't rise much beyond what people would be paid elsewhere, no matter how many workers would be available at higher salary levels.

Re:I would like to hire a good system adminsitrato

[BigDaveyL]

Here's one idea: You might have to overpay or take someone more "average" than you are expecting. But, that is life.

Breeding Program

[Baldrson]

The most parsimonious explanation for a wide range of phenomena, including the very significant phenomenon of massive immigration following on the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 to replace the population lost with the destruction of the middle class along with its total fertility rate during the ensuing generation, is a breeding program getting rid of individualism in favor of eusocial workers. Individualist tendencies are hard to manage.

Re: supply, demand, currency, prices, compensation

[NickGnome]

"Don't the laws of supply and demand state that if the overall wage goes down, purchasing power goes down, and then prices must fall to match?"
...

There is no "overall wage". When we talk about supply and demand, we're usually taking about the supply of and the demand for some particular product or service, or "market basket" or products and services. In practice, we use statistical averages or medians, income quintiles... and use longitudinal studies to track a sampling of individuals or families over time.

But, if the supply of currency goes up, by quantitative easing a.k.a. old-fashioned debasing a.k.a. inflation, for instance, then the amount of currency required to purchase goods will increase, i.e. prices will rise. But they don't all rise at once, nor by exactly the same amount or percentage, because some people get the new currency earlier than others. Some people don't become aware of the increase in currency (directly or indirectly) until late in the sequence.

Those who get the new currency first are usually able to buy at pre-inflation/pre-devaluation/pre-QE prices, while those who catch on late, find themselves buying at the higher prices.

Debasement of the currency hurts poor and wealthy alike, but those with closest ties to the issuers of the currency, those who receive the new money first, come out better than most. Those who keep savings through the period lose as its value is eroded. Those with debts win because they can pay their debt with the lower-valued currency.

In this case, the supply of labor is being expanded, the compensation of those in the affected fields drops, their "purchasing power", savings, and retained wealth are eroded (as stuff wears out and they cannot afford to maintain or repair or replace).

OTOH, the reason given for moving manufacturing off-shore was to be "competitive" (with whom?), to hold down or reduce prices. But prices went up from the 1970s to present, and profits and compensation to many executives, and some investors rose. But, at the same time, the Fed and US (and other) governments were debasing the currency and competing for finances, and playing weird games with regulation of financial institutions, so the financial waters were muddied. During which quarters did debasement predominate? During which did reduction in quality of goods predominate? Which goods increased in quality and which decreased? During which did retail price rises predominate?

If wages remained flat

[PhamNguyen]

The summary's reasoning is that "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..." but this same reasoning implies that if there hadn't been an influx of foreign workers, then wages would have risen, and thus their definition of a labor shortage would have been met.

I think the usage of terms like "shortage" on both sides is misleading. What there really is is a supply curve for IT related labor, and a demand curve for IT related labor. H-1B's increase the supply of IT related labor, lowering prices (i.e. wages). No matter what rules are imposed such as "equal wages for the equivalent job" H-1B's will lower wages, and if they didn't then they would not benefit industry in any way since (as is rightly pointed out by anti H-1B advocates) when people say they can't find an employee with certain traits, what they really mean is they can't find someone with those traits for that particular price

Employers *always* prefer slaves and serfs

[gestalt_n_pepper]

What they can get are H1-Bs, who are like indentured servants. H1-Bs can't change jobs easily. They're cheap. They can be fired on a whim. Insuance can be optional. They're slightly better than purely offshored work because you can communicate with them more easily and have some hope of getting what you asked for, usually.

Employers will *always* choose the slavert/serf option if it's available. This is the kind of unregulated capitalism favored by libertarian nitwits.

Regulations happened for a reason. Work it out.

Re:Shortage of STEM may be a myth

[ebno-10db]

But the shortage of *qualified, employable* STEM is very very real.

Do you have an argument for that assertion, or even *gasp* objective data?

Re:Definition of shortage -- more may still be bet

[ebno-10db]

this definition (that more resources allocated to STEM would be better) is a fine definition for a shortage

The Humpty Dumpty school of economics. If you can't figure out how to refute the study that says there is no shortage, then just change the definition of "shortage"!

"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

-- "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There" (1871), Lewis Carroll

Employers are con men and criminals

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Employers are largely composed of con men and criminals. Ask any IRS agent about it; they just take this as an accepted fact going in and they're not wrong. I have worked for upwards of 20 employers of various descriptions from flipping burgers to mega corps and I can say with certainty that each and every one of them was some species of scammer.

Congress listens to them at all because Congress is more of the same- ambitious men who want money, women and power. Anything that gets in the way- in this case paying Americans American wages instead of pretending there's a desperate STEM labor shortage and flooding the market with H1Bs- is a total non-starter for them. They don't even think twice about it- "oh... here's how you run THIS scam ..."

There's not really more to it than that. Employers are liars through and through and the companies they create are in a constant game of cat and mouse with the law, with their customers and with their employees.

It's genetic and what we need to find is a genetic cure for it. We need to tone down the sociopathic impulses that drive people and tone up the empathetic ones. Doing that will be THE achievement of the 21st century.

It's not panacea, but any little movement in that direction would yield huge savings in law enforcement, regulation, societal disruption and a massive increase in egalitarian outcomes. We can then take all that saved energy and money and attention and put it on creating even better things and circumstances for ourselves.

People from future generations will look at our literature and TV and movies and culture and be glad they didn't now just as we're glad we didn't live in the Dark Ages.

In all projections of a future (where humans have survived), we're more peaceful, more productive, there aren't have and have nots , there isn't just base level strife that causes grown men to rape 5 year old children.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/18/africa-child-rape-crisis_n_3103558.html

How do we get there? By religion? By indoctrination? By capitalism? By communism? The fact is men are genetically predisposed to not just crave having more than the other guy but to FLAUNT it and to absolutely GRIND the other guy down. This is how men show their brightly colored feathers to females and females do indeed prefer men who have more stuff, power and prestige.

Women like winners and men like to win. It's a marriage made by hell.

So sure, the corporations are knowing and deliberately lying about the STEM graduate situation. They've been doing that since at least 1995 according to Norm Matloff.

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2012/feb/08/citylights1-fed-H1B-visa-engineers/

  And Congress and the press go along with the lie because all the men at the top of THOSE hierarchies stand to benefit by undermining other men who do not hold those positions of power. This is just instinctive knowledge. Congress knows they're lying, knows why they're lying and knows it's their part in this scam to wring their hands and decry their fellow (male) citizens qualifications.

STEM competition

[ackior]

I live in an area with a lot of high tech jobs (Salt Lake) and I can tell you that the competition is intense. I have been looking for a job for almost five months, with a Master's in engineering and no experience/internships (think that last bit is really screwing me atm), and I have received one interview total. Several of my applications were even auto rejected because I had 95% of the skills they wanted, but not 100%. The pool of applicants is so large that they don't have to care if you don't have absolutely everything they want. I was always told that engineering is a skill set that leads to easy employment, if you can make it through college. Turns out that was wildly inaccurate.

Re:STEM competition

[White Flame]

I was always told that engineering is a skill set that leads to easy employment, if you can make it through college. Turns out that was wildly inaccurate.

Or, it was accurate, but past performance is not an indicator of future performance.

Re:Trained != competent

[spiffmastercow]

I'm a long-time Googler. Part of the job is conducting technical interviews. Which means that I spend many hours each week talking to people who, despite their impressive resumes and academic degrees from world-class institutions, *can't program a fucking computer*.

Don't talk to me about a sufficiency of trained workers until one of them shows up for an interview with some grasp of the fetch-execute cycle.

Are you really doing that much assembly coding at google? Maybe you are, but if I was going for a google interview I would brush up on things like time complexity, tree structures, and combinatorics, and would probably fail your test because I don't memorize the names of all the steps of "look at the register, increment the register and load the memory address in another register, execute the memory in that register, repeat".

Washington is right about engineering

[punisher777]

I do not argue that this research is correct about the overall STEM results but when you look at engineering the US is lacking (especially in electrical engineering). The problem started when many US companies in the 1980's decided to manufacture their products in Asia. Over time these Asian companies started hiring their own engineers so that they could design and manufacture their own electronics. Normally you would think US companies would fight these Asian companies new competition but instead they decided to get rid of their own engineers and let the Asian companies engineer their products. This has continued to this day and continues to be an issue. Electronic engineering is not the only issue there are other types of engineering that we have let go to other countries.

Re:Washington is right about engineering

[ebno-10db]

I strongly agree with you, but by your own argument the problem is a lack of demand for EE's in the US, not a lack of supply. Rising unemployment numbers lend credence to that idea. Clearly the answer is to increase demand by moving more engineering and manufacturing back to the US, rather than further diluting a market already plagued by lack of demand with additional guest workers.

yeah

[buddyglass]

They're just not very productive relative to how much they expect to be paid.

Re:Shortage of STEM may be a myth

[BonThomme]

I'm guessing your employable criterion has something to do with wages...

Re:I've been unable to find a job for years... apk

[sanman2]

The OP was about STEM not SPAM

Taxation

[tlambert]

At current tax rates, that 1% in your scenario might pay so much in taxes that the 99% would still have more money then the status quo in post-tax and transfer terms.

"Might" and "if" are the most important words in your post. We also might have world peaces next year, but I'm not holding my breath. With capital gains rates capped at 15%, the average billionaire pays a lower marginal tax rate than I do. That does not bode well for your hypothesis.

That's incorrect. You are quoting the Long Term Capital Gains Federal Rate and ignoring the state rate, and that fact that both the fed and the state will go after AMT and tax as ordinary income as a short term capitol gain.

So all the FaceBook millionaires and billionaires Pay about 50% on their realized stock value at IPO time when they effectively realized the gain. In addition, FaceBook IPO'ed at $38 and immediately dropped to $25, and the employee lockup period was long enough that in order to pay the taxes, it was required to borrow against future value of the stock.

So basically they are paying $19/share in tax on something that's currently only worth $25/share -- effectively a 76% tax rate.

I understand why there are lockup periods, but you need to understand why lockup periods+ AMT is evil.

And yes, you can get out of the state portion of that if you realized the income when you were working in Nevada, Washington, Texas, or some other state with no state income tax, but realize also that RSUs, which have replaced ISOs, mean you realize the value, at grant time and you can be damned sure if you were working in California at the time of the grant, California is going to come after you for their share of the time amortized appreciation in value that you "realized" before moving to one of those states.

At least in the tech fields (News For Nerds, Stuff That Matters ring a bell?), most of the people getting these options don't start out rich in the first place, so these are usurious tax rates for these people.

It's no wonder Eduardo Saverin did his citizenship ploy; it saved him a heck of a lot more than the $100M that was being widely reported at the time, it was closer to $1.5B - that's 3 times what Larry Ellison paid for Lanai, the 6th larges Hawaiian island.

Shortage of GOOD STEM candidates

[Fastolfe]

Lots of people seem to be missing the point here. It's easy to be cynical and point out that companies must be doing it so they can get away with paying less for desperate H1B workers. These people do not work for tech companies trying to hire good people. There is no shortage of candidates with STEM backgrounds and education, which is all this study seems to say. I have done literally hundreds of interviews at a large tech company for software/systems engineers, and meet an endless supply of STEM candidates all the time. The problem is that the vast majority of them do not meet our hiring bar. If you need to hire 100 software engineers, but can only 50 that meet the company's high hiring standards, that kind of sounds like a shortage to me. Sure, we can hire 50 mediocre software engineers to get to 100, but why would I want to do that? I'd much rather see better STEM education and H1B flexibility (in that order) so that I can fill those other 50 positions with good people.

Re:credentials != capabilities

[Fastolfe]

Yes, this is absolutely the case. I do a lot of interviewing for a major tech company, and while there is no shortage at all of STEM candidates shoving resumes in our face, very few of them meet our (admittedly high) acceptance bar. So, for us, there is indeed a shortage of qualified workers. More/better STEM education would allow smarter people to enter the industry, as would allowing more H1B visas.

Re:Oooh, a conspiracy!

[Frosty Piss]

Apparently I didn't make the joke ridiculous enough for you to get it.

Apparently not, I'm still not getting it. But I'll accept your "good faith" attempt at humor...

A conspiracy [wikipedia.org] is (by definition) an agreement between two or more people to commit a crime in the future.

Broaden your horizens beyond the Wikipedia Bible. You've referenced "Conspiracy (Crime)". But the "Conspiracy Theory" entry says:

A conspiracy theory is an explanatory proposition that accuses a person, group or organization of having caused or covered up an event or phenomenon of great social, political, or economic impact... The term "conspiracy theory" is used to indicate a narrative genre that includes a broad selection of (not necessarily related) arguments for the existence of grand conspiracies.

Re:Shortage of STEM may be a myth

[EmagGeek]

No, but it has a lot more to do with not having a selfish, self-righteous, spoiled brat attitude such as your own.

Re:Shortage of STEM may be a myth

[EmagGeek]

Sure, I have lots of objective data. I've owned my business for better than two decades and, back when I participated in the farcical traditional employee engagement process, probably interviewed over 2000 candidates over the years for various engineering and science positions.

The vast majority were very good at playing the "bending the truth on my resume" and "vomiting bullshit buzzwords at the interview" games, but not at demonstrating actual proficiency.