Employment Agency Cites Job Shortage in Tech Industry
Bright, a company that collects resumes and attempts to match job seekers to open jobs, has found a large number of tech workers are looking for work in STEM fields despite claims that there is a shortage of high-skilled workers. According to its own analysis, Bright says they found evidence of labor shortages in a few specific engineering fields, but for the most part, there is a large available pool of high-skilled candidates for tech employers to choose from.
"I didn't expect this result," said Steve Goodman, Bright's chief executive. "We're Silicon Valley people, we just assumed the shortage was true. It turns out there is a little Silicon Valley groupthink going on about this, though it's not comfortable to say that."
Bright's analysis found that there are few candidates for lower-end computer programming positions, but for high-skilled computer programming positions, there is an abundance of available candidates. Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard, says the data from Bright shows that there is not a huge mismatch in open positions and available workers, so it's not a given that Congress must expand H-1B high-skilled worker visas. The Senate-passed amnesty bill, S.744, doubles the number of H-1B visas given out each year, grants green cards to foreign students who graduate from U.S. universities with advanced degrees in STEM, and allows foreign citizens with a Ph.D. in STEM to receive a green card.
"But they [the tech companies] don't help us determine whether the U.S. economy would benefit from an expansion of the H1-B visa program or what the impact would be on U.S. workers in these occupations," Katz said. "The case for and against expanding the H1-B visa program should be done on an overall assessment of the impact on the U.S. economy (workers, consumers, investors, students/future workers) and not only on whether there are short-run 'shortages' in any specific occupation."
For more information, see the New York Times.