“we seem to be finding less need for “workers”.
Not at all. We find less need for low-skilled workers. There is a huge shortage of workers -— highly skilled ones -— in the U.S. It is somewhat filled by H1B program, but that is a drop in the bucket.
What we have is not a shortage of skilled Americans but a shortage of skilled American under 40 who can work at third world salaries. Skilled Americans compete with guest workers who often pay no or little taxes, as well as illegal aliens (visa overstays) who work through temp agencies that vouch for them.
Here is a sampling of interesting articles and studies about H-1B's (and other skilled workers).
If we had been experiencing a shortage of skilled workers salaries would be going up, not down, i.e. unless supply and demand does apply to labor.
starting salaries lower in 2005 than 2001 Hiring younger and cheaper workers is a major motivator in bring in skilled guest workers.
global mythology - shortage of 500,000 knowledge workers
WSJ Disputes Engineer Shortageglobal mythology - shortage of 500,000 knowledge workersHow and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech WorkersUSA Today declares teacher shortage while Dallas fires hundreds The World's Best at Giving Away Jobs
Currently we are bringing in 125,000 new legal workers per month (a combination of guest workers and green cards), many as the result of so-called free trade agreements that over ride our immigration law and have no accommodation for the unemployment situation in the US.
Siminar on How to Replace Americans With Guest Workers
Addressing the 'brightest and best myth:
Best? Brightest?
Thanks for those links. They will be very useful.
As for H-1B "skilled workers"...that is a misnomer. The better term would be "credentialed workers." Credentials do NOT equal skill or suitability to a task. I've been involved in IT hiring for a decade. All H-1B workers without exception have impressive credentials, but most of them have next to no actual experience, and some are flatly unable to do the very tasks they are credentialed for. But they work for a fraction of the wage expected by skilled US workers, and-most insidiously-one rejects them at peril of being labelled a racist. There are a lot of hiring games being played, and quality suffers for it.
Most of the articles you sited (thank very much for making them available in one place), cover a lot of ground and don't make much sense. The WSJ one, for instance, talks about greater selectivity among the companies, as if that were contradictory to the existence of shortages. In 2005 computerization in recruitment made it possible for any moron to submit a resume to Microsoft, which then has to spend more time in weeding out the candidates. What does that prove? Only that a recruiter has more second-class resumes to go through; it may still face a shortage of the first-class resumes it is looking for.
The last one is even equally problematic. The author argues, incorrectly, that salaries prove the absence of shortage. But he has not learned his economics properly. Price is indicative only when there is no rationing. Shortage of skill work is rationing. One cannot use the non-rationing tools (price) in situations where rationing exists; this is simply absurd. And yet, that is what the unsuspecting author does.
One of blogs/articles you have kindly made available does inadvertently argue against itself. It sites the fact that more than one half of the science/engineering students are foreign. Right here you can see that graduation data, sites by many opponents, do not apply. "See," they argue, "the number of engineering graduates increased from 72,000 to 81,000 in 1999-2004 -- we don't have any shortages thus." But one half of those graduates do not satisfy the citizenship requirement; we have therefore only 35,000-40,000 of American engineering graduates. Different picture, isn't it? Now the foreign students still apply for jobs, and some get it --- under H1B or some such visa. But now the opponents are railing against those. None of it makes sense. The arguments are supposedly common-sense level (who can argue with prices, for instance?) but are actually fallacious.
Finally, H1B visas cover not only electrical engineers and software specialists. Go to any major university and count the number of Americans in the graduate programs in science, engineering, or business. Count the faculty that teaches in the corresponding departments. I could name for you universities in which there is not a single American-born person in the entire area of teaching/research. Why this is happening can be discussed. But to deny the facts is unproductive.