Obama Administration Claims There Are 545,000 IT Job Openings
dcblogs writes The White House has established a $100 million program that endorses fast-track, boot camp IT training efforts and other four-year degree alternatives. But this plan is drawing criticism because of the underlying message it sends in the H-1B battle. The federal program, called TechHire, will get its money from H-1B visa fees, and the major users of this visa are IT services firms that outsource jobs. Another source of controversy will be the White House's assertion that there are 545,000 unfilled IT jobs. It has not explained how it arrived at this number, but the estimate will likely be used as a talking point by lawmakers seeking to raise the H-1B cap.
That number is EASY to figure out. Just look at all the revolving door jobs the IT industry has created the past few years. The largest companies don't want to high full time anymore, so they just go through temp agencies (*COUGH*MICROSOFT*COUGH*). So, once the temp hits a certain date, they're terminated and replaced by another temp (and the original temp is invited back after a certain period of time). So, with this, we just look at the cycle of temps going in/out of the tech industry. These are the "openings", which are just being filled by the same cycle of people.