H-1B visas power the tech industry. But experts say that’s not necessarily because of a talent gap.
Billionaire Elon Musk recently sparked heated debate online when he said on social media that the United States lacked enough top engineers and pointed to immigration as a solution to what he described as a lack of technical expertise. .
“America is desperately short of talented, motivated engineers,” Musk release On his social media platform X, he compared tech companies to professional sports teams looking for players. “If you force the best minds in the world to play for each other, America will fail.”
The core of the claim is divide Supporters of President-elect Donald Trump tend to take a tough stance on immigration, while tech entrepreneurs like Musk, who runs exploration company SpaceX and electric carmaker Tesla, both of which employ Many foreign workers are employed as H-. 1B visa.
Yet labor market data shows there is no shortage of U.S. tech workers, and critics of the H-1B program say the program displaces Americans in favor of foreign-born workers hired at lower wages. Proponents of recruiting skilled workers from abroad say tech jobs are not a zero-sum game and that hiring foreigners with specialized skills can spur innovation and ultimately create more jobs for U.S.-born workers.
Data from the National Center for Education Statistics programme The number of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees awarded in computer science and engineering in the United States reached its highest level since the 1970-71 academic year in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 academic years.
At the same time, U.S. tech and engineering jobs are expected to grow grow According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this number will decrease by 7% by 2033. The share of the foreign-born science and engineering workforce has increased over the past three decades, according to Over the past five years, STEM workers have had the highest employment rates of any occupation.
Companies with the most H-1B employees
Tech companies are among the biggest beneficiaries of the H-1B program, which allows highly skilled foreigners to work in the United States, and Amazon received the Most H1-B visas U.S. Department of Labor data shows that by 2024, this will be the case for any company. Microsoft, Google and Meta also made the top 10, while Tesla currently ranks 16th, according to The National Foundation for American Policy is a nonpartisan think tank focused on trade and immigration issues.
Last year, more H-1B visas were awarded to software developers than any other position.
“The H-1B visa is like the Swiss Army knife of visas. It has a lot of different uses,” said John Skrentny, a sociology professor at the University of California, San Diego, who wrote a book about why STEM graduates A book for students choosing careers outside of this field. They learned. “If you hear people say that H-1B visas are important for attracting the best and brightest to the United States, they are right. At the same time, H-1B visas are also used for cheap labor.”
Investigation includes 60 minutes and new york times We found that some companies laid off U.S. workers and then replaced them with H-1B workers, sometimes even requiring laid-off workers to train their successors in order to receive severance pay.
Ronil Hira, an associate professor of political science at Howard University and a fellow at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said some of the positions for which H-1B workers are hired also involve less complex work, such as product testing. These positions do not necessarily meet the visa program’s intended goal of outsourcing positions that require unique skills.
In addition to large tech companies, consulting firms such as Cognizant, Tata and Infosys are among the largest recipients of H-1B visas, providing tech companies with a stable supply of highly educated, well-trained, and willing workers on a contract basis. Workforce at work.
Sheila said these companies have an incentive to find workers who are willing to accept lower wages.
“Their business model is to resell labor. If you resell labor, the way you become competitive is to reduce labor costs.”
Promote innovation?
Still, evidence of the H-1B program’s broader impact on U.S. employment is mixed. one study Research from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics found that employers receiving H-1B visas are not displacing American workers. The research firm found that while companies that initially received visas did hire more foreign-born workers in response, they also generally experienced revenue growth and were ultimately able to hire more workers.
Research shows the impact is greater for smaller employers who apply for only a small number of visas.
“Most of our results are driven by small firms, because the lottery is really important to these firms,” said Parag Mahajan, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Delaware and one of the study’s authors. “It’s important,” he said, that “it’s valuable to look elsewhere for talent.”
Mahajan’s research also found that for some companies, hiring foreign workers on H-1B visas ultimately creates jobs for U.S.-born workers because that person’s skills can help the company grow.
But some economists, including Sheila, dispute the idea that foreign workers are needed to fill a nationwide talent shortage.
Sheila said when there is a shortage of workers in a particular position, wages in that industry rise, just as natural gas prices rise when oil supplies fall. But labor market data shows that wages in the technology industry have remained relatively stable.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, median weekly wages for computer and mathematics jobs increased 0.27% from 2019 to 2023, after adjusting for inflation. Wages for engineering and construction jobs fell 3.53% over the same period.
More firings than hirings
Tech companies have also laid off hundreds of employees in recent years while continuing to offer new H-1B visas. Analysis by economic policy institute The study found that the 30 companies hiring the most H-1B workers hired 34,000 new H-1B workers in 2022, but laid off at least 85,000 workers that year and early 2023.
The layoffs reflect a decline in available jobs in the industry. job posting According to data from the recruiting platform, the number of software developers on Indeed.com is 67% of what it was in February 2020.
It’s unclear how the debate over H-1B will translate into policy once Trump takes office. During his first term, he issued an executive order called “Buy American and Hire American” aimed at supporting U.S. manufacturing. The order also directs Cabinet members to recommend changes to the H-1B program to limit it to only the highest-paid or highest-skilled applicants.
But during the interview new york post Last month, Trump called the H-1B visa a “great program.” Musk, who has become a close adviser to the president-elect, said he would “go to war on this issue.” postal.
“I’ve always loved visas, I’ve always supported visas,” Trump said. “That’s why we have them.”
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