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A couple of years ago it was reported that in 2012 more than half of all American wage earners made less than $30,000 per year. The Social Security Administration's new earnings report for 2014 is out and there's still much gnashing of teeth about the dying middle class. With earnings numbers that haven't changed much in 2 years, estimates running as high as 100 million working age Americans without a job, and no one tracking the population of H-1B visa holders, where are the jobs really?
The July 9, 2015, issue of The New York Review of Books carried a very thoughtful piece by Andrew Hacker. In "The Frenzy About High-Tech Talent," Hacker discusses a number of books and reports that address whether or not there really is a need for more tech talent, the justification for the H-1B visa program, and issues in the American educational system.
[...] Throughout his piece Hacker is basically questioning two things:
1. Is there really an unfilled need for STEM graduates, or are we actually graduating too many so that many end up unemployed or employed in different areas?
2. Are there flaws in the American education system, both at the K-12 level and in college, that lead us to be very dependent on foreign STEM graduates?
[...] The texts Hacker is reviewing, and his own information, seem to dwell predominately on overall job projections for the STEM fields. Nowhere does there appear a breakout of the job forecast for computing related job categories. With the increased ubiquity of computing across all industries and employment sectors, it seems unlikely that we will see the "deskilling" trend that may be occurring in engineering (whereby engineers create equipment that means they and others like them no longer have job opportunities). We know that there are many jobs in the "tech sector" but there are also a lot of computing jobs in banking, finance, manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, etc. We can get an accurate picture of future job openings only if we can make a good determination of the computing jobs that exist outside of the "tech sector."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @03:44PM
I like your list. Don't quite agree with all of it, but it's more worthwhile than most I've seen. Here's a response:
1) Pretty much. Present US workers also need to find alternative revenue streams. Got a hobby? Can you make it pay? Even to the level of paying for its own equipment and resources? That's a hell of a lot better place to start than punching the clock a little later.
2) Yes. Yes, yes. Regulation, red tape, this stuff is a killer. You don't know how much until you run your own business. My own business development has been held up for literal calendar years by the requirements of regulators with nothing better to do. Oh, I submitted paperwork but the regs changed while I was actually submitting the paperwork? Go back to square 1. And there's no meaningful recourse. If your answer to anything in America is to push for more laws or regulations, you're wrong unless you're the agent of a foreign power.
3) I wouldn't entirely nuke the entitlements, but I would reform them greatly. Honestly, we could go to a no-questions-asked basic income and actually save so much money by reduced red tape that it would be affordable, especially once you toss in the money which would otherwise have gone to our present entitlements. So it's unfair that a bazillionaire gets it - it still works out cheaper.
4) Yeah, pretty much. Give the H1Bs a level playing field and their pay will stop being so much of a selling point, as compared to their competence.
I would add this:
5) The dollar is overpriced. It's nice for the consumer because cheap imports, and it's nice for foreign policy because it helps swing a big international dick, but it subsidises fiscal irresponsibility in the government and prices local production out of the market. Let the dollar slide down international rankings a bit - it doesn't have to be that much. Losing maybe 20% of relative value would boost insourcing massively because logistics ain't free, and encourage a lot more efficiency. It would be bad for many people - there's no free lunch here - but a lot of what we're seeing is evidence of price imbalances.