No shortage of STEM workers

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2013/12/04/Obamas-Immigration-Sop-Silicon-Valley

Liz PeekThe Fiscal Times
December 4, 2013

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A recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Michael Anft notes that most of the reports urging schools to expand their science and math offerings have been underwritten by the technology industry.

Most research not funded by Silicon Valley finds that other than petroleum engineers currently benefiting from the fracking boom, most STEM grads — those specializing in chemistry or mechanical engineering, for instance — have seen flat or falling wages, suggesting a labor surplus.

At a recent Congressional hearing on H-1B visas, Hal Salzman, professor of Public Policy at Rutgers University, reports that we are educating 50 percent more IT grads every year than there are job openings. Salzman cites a report he co-authored last April for the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute which concluded, “The United States has more than a sufficient supply of workers available to work in STEM occupations.” The study noted that the flow of students into STEM fields has been strong over the past decade, and that “the number of U.S. graduates with STEM majors appears to be responsive to changes in employment levels and wages.” In other words, the marketplace is working as it should — more than enough reason for the feds to butt out. - See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2013/12/04/Obamas-Immigration-Sop-Silicon-Valley#sthash.N4bvXyci.dpuf

A report this past spring from Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute ranked unemployment by majors: almost 15 percent of recent Information Systems graduates were without work, the highest of any major, compared to 7.9 percent for college graduates overall. Nearly 9 percent of computer science majors were unemployed, compared to 4.8 percent for nursing, for instance.

Joblessness for STEM workers tend to be lower than for the population overall, but has risen over the past few years. Further, from 2000 to 2011, the average hourly wage for workers with a bachelor’s or advanced degree in computer and math occupations rose less than half a percent per year — from $37.27 to $39.24 in 2012 dollars. Surely if there were an acute shortage of such laborers, wages would have jumped more sharply.

Why then the push for more STEM students? There is no question that it behooves Silicon Valley to have more applicants competing for their jobs. Charges of trying to suppress wages gain credence from incidents like that involving Molina Healthcare Inc., which processes Medicaid and Medicare paperwork for the government. In 2010, the day after Molina received Department of Labor approval for adding 40 H-1B workers, the company hired 40 workers from India and fired a roughly equivalent number of U.S. programmers, managers and analysts.

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