The Myth of America's Tech-Talent Shortage
by JORDAN WEISSMANN
So it turns out the United States is not, in fact, the educational wasteland tech industry lobbyists would have you think.
Companies like Microsoft often claim that America is suffering from an economically hobbling shortage of science, math, and computer talent. The solution, they argue, is to let employers fill their hiring gaps by importing tens of thousands of educated guest workers beyond what the law currently allows. Much as farmers want to bring in field workers from Mexico on short-term visas, software developers desperately want to bring in more coders from India.
The Senate's current immigration bill would grant their wish. As written, it vastly increases the annual limit on H1-B visas, which allow corporations to bring employees with a bachelor's degree to the U.S. from overseas for up to six years. Roughly half the guest workers who currently arrive through the program come for computer-related jobs. When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced earlier this month that he was forming a political action group to back the reform effort, it was in part seen as a move to ensure that the H1-B provision would make it to President Obama's desk intact.
There's just one problem. That whole skills shortage? It's a myth, as was amply illustrated (yet again) in a report written by researchers from Rutgers, Georgetown, and American University, and issued by the Economic Policy Institute. It still might be the case that tech companies are having trouble finding specific skill sets in certain niches (think cloud software development, or Android programming), but there simply aren't any signs pointing to a broad dearth of talent.
Our Programmer Surplus
Colleges, for instance, are already minting far more programmers and engineers than the job market is absorbing. Roughly twice as many American undergraduates earn degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines than go on to work in those fields. As shown in the EPI graph below, in 2009 less than two thirds of employed computer science grads were working in the IT sector a year after graduation.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-myth-of-americas-tech-talent-shortage/275319/
= new reply since forum marked as read
If you have a problem with the author of this article's statistical analysis then where is your link to statistics that refute him? Instead you personally attack the OP and the Source plus other DU members who post here.
I was all ready to type out a "what are you talking about" response, too!
we had to be more competitive with the global market and it wasn't fair that Grad Students from other countries come here to get educated but go back to their own country to work. He felt that it was important for there to be opportunity for them to stay here so we can be competitive. That was code for "they will work for less here...because it's more than they make in their own country" and drive down our own Educated Work force salaries because of the competition from those willing to work for less.
He also said Liberal Arts degree isn't helpful when we need those who can do the jobs of High Tech like Coding and Programming. So sounded to me like all us Liberal Arts grads should just turn ourselves into math whizzes and retrain into coding and programming or we will be working at Burger King if we are lucky enough to get a job there.
His view of the world is interesting. 
One, a B.A. in biology back in 1980. I went to a liberal arts college that did not offer the BS degree at the time. I interviewed for a job with some idiot that implied that a BA was less than a BS.
I informed him that the college I graduated from did not offer the BS. He ignored me, like all bosses and authority figures have, over the course of my entire life.
Second useless degree, a Juris Doctor back in 1985. Never got a job as a paralegal or anything else, except a crappy temp job.
I had a database entry job once where we had to go through ancient gas leases and enter the information. You had to have either a bachelor's degree or a law degree to understand what you were inputting. It was a weird combination of using legal knowledge and utter drudgery. I was barely able to stand it. It lasted about three months.
Basically, I feel like I wasted all the years I spent earning those two degrees. They don't hire physics/math majors either.
They told baby boomers we needed to earn science degrees because of the space program, and beating the Russians. However, they did not hire us after we became the best-educated generation in American history. They waste us and toss us out.
