Report: Claims of High-Tech Workers Shortage ‘a Myth’
27th November 2013
Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Michael Anft writes that “most researchers who have looked into the issue—those who don’t receive their money from technology companies or their private foundations –say the notion that there is a STEM-worker shortage is “a myth”
Silicon Valley lobbying groups have spent over $130 million on lobbying efforts to triple the number of visas the country currently awards on a yearly basis in an immigration bill, and those like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg have said that their high-tech companies need more workers from the STEM fields. If not, they have claimed that “a continuing shortage of workers in those fields will sink the nation and its economy beneath the surface of an ever-flatter world, overrun by lower-paid foreigners who have outpaced us in STEM education.”
According to Anft, though, “Unemployment rates within STEM fields generally, while lower than the overall unemployment rate of 7.2 percent, are often higher than they’ve been in years—a sign that there is a shortage of jobs, not workers.” He notes that if there were a shortage, there would be a “rise in wages in technology and science fields. And that isn’t happening.”