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U.S. should import more skilled workers
Commentator Will Wilkinson
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TEXT OF COMMENTARY
Scott Jagow: A new report says that within seven years, the U.S. needs hundreds of thousands of new graduates in math and science fields. That's to keep up with the rest of the world.
But commentator Will Wilkinson says an advanced degree in science won't necessarily protect Americans from cut-throat competition.
Will Wilkinson: If you're a highly-skilled worker, America needs you. But if you've got a foreign passport, we probably won't let you in.
The U.S. issues only 65,000 H-1B visas for skilled workers each year and that's not very many. Senators McCain and Obama have both said they would support raising the cap. They acknowledge we need more skilled workers, and they're right. Yes, it would be good for innovation and growth and it would bring down the prices of goods created by skilled workers, but here's another reason you might not have thought of: Wage inequality.
Increases in wage inequality over the past few decades is primarily a story of the supply and demand of skilled labor together with the effects of technological innovation. Wage increases tend to track improvements in the productivity of labor and gains in productivity tend to be driven by innovations that help workers do more in less time. But in recent decades, technical innovation has increased the productivity of more highly-educated workers faster than it has for less-educated workers. These growing inequalities in productivity have helped create growing inequalities in wages.
But that's not the whole story. The American system of higher education produces skilled workers too slowly to keep up with the demand. This scarcity in the supply bids up the wages of the well-educated even more, further widening the wage gap. If we raised visa quotas on skilled labor, that would help bring supply in line with demand and reduce the wage gap between more and less skilled workers.
These days, almost everybody but their beneficiaries think agricultural subsidies are a lousy idea. They benefit a few already relatively wealthy American farmers and agribusiness firms to the detriment of poor farmers around the world. But H-1B visa restrictions are subsidies that benefit relatively rich domestic workers over their poorer foreign peers, and so it turns out many of us liberal-minded college grads are enjoying our own protectionist boost.
In this case, it seems the moral outrage is... well, we seem to be keeping it to ourselves.
Jagow: Will Wilkinson is a research fellow at the Cato Institute.
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A shortage of highly skilled workers? Are you kidding me?
I have a Ph.D. in the biological sciences and recently escaped from the postdoctoral "training" purgatory that so many Ph.D. level workers find themselves in. Even with a Ph.D. we run into the conundrum of "well, we won't hire you without Industry experience" from the likes of Genentech...who then run whining to congress about how they need to import more Ph.D.s. Trust me, we have a giant untapped pool of Ph.D. level talent in the biological sciences that for some reason Industry just doesn't want to see. Having made the transition from Academia to Industry myself, I can tell you that it takes less then 6 months to learn "Industry culture". We don't need to raise the cap on visas...the Biotech Industry needs to rethink their recruitment strategies.
The numbers do not bear out Mr. Wilkinson's arguments. The Center for Immigration Studies has a well sourced report available online that refutes every single part of Mr. Wilkinson's case. The summary reads, "As the annual H-1B quota gets exhausted, industry groups claim that the huge number of H-1B visa applications demonstrates that more H-1B visas should be available. However, comparing the number of H-1B visas in their largest represented occupations (computers and engineering) to the number of jobs created in those occupations presents a different picture of the H-1B visa program. This study examines the relationship between the number of H-1B visas and job growth. It finds that the number of H-1B visas approved in these fields greatly exceeds any reasonable number reflected by economic demand." ( http://www.cis.org/node/222 ) H1-B visas are about driving down labor costs in the last place that good wages even exist in this country. I, as an American, don't mind competing with foreign workers if the playing field is level. But the tax breaks for foreign investment that move jobs overseas are a problem that are helping to fuel massive trade deficits that are simply unsustainable. There can't be a service economy without something for it to service. Revision of tax policy and trade agreements are necessary to restore the American economy, not more foreign workers in an effort to deflate wages in the face of 10% inflation (includes food and fuel.)
Mr. Wilkinson's commentary is a pathetic excuse for the failings of our parental and educational society. Today, many students do not see the need for an education because they see that the "state" will take care of them if they whine enough.
The work ethic has disappeared in the smoke of our destroyed family and family values. Parents and children do not eat meals together and discuss events of their day. Many single family parents do not have time to guide their children in the values that once were held in high esteem. It is more important for them to be friends than parents. They do not participate in what is happening in their children's school and they certainly do not demand high educational standards.
Progress is great but at the expense of our future scholars, scientists, philosophers and educators is pathetic. When school children or young adults cannot find, on a map, Iraq or Iran or know the name of the states around the one they live in, it is time to re-evaluate who we are, where we are going and who will get us there. If we are to be included as one of the leaders of the world, we need to education those future leaders.
Is there even the slightest evidence that an increase in productivity increases wages? I mean for anyone but the CEO of course. Decreasing "inequity" by attacking the last few middle-class jobs around but not doing anything about CEO compensation is a bad joke.
Can you handle the truth???
Do you want the truth of the H-1B, skilled worker issue?
then go to www.eng-i.com/E-Newsletters.htm
and for the real shocker!
www.youtube.com/programmersguild
It is all about cheap labor !
For more:
www.noslaves.com
www.brightfuturejobs.com
www.madnamerica.com
Mr. Wilkinson's commentary is filled with inaccuracy and disinformation, and shame on Market Place for not presenting more accurate information to your listeners.
As worker productivity increased and maintained a consistently high level, congressional representative from both parties sold the American economy to the highest corporate campaign contributor and shipped good American jobs abroad in the form of trade agreements, such as NAFTA, for cheap labor free of health, labor, and environmental constraints.
Written by corporate lobbyists, these same trade bills deliberately destroyed local agricultural economies such as Mexico, sending the impoverished fleeing to our shores in despair.
It was a win-win for corporations. They controlled economies here and abroad and these poor immigrants were cheap labor that undermined wages here.
The impoverished American communities, having lost jobs and revenues for education and infrastructure from these now-closed factories, fill the residents with despair and in turn, now fill our prisons.
The solution is to rescind NAFTA and every other congressional betrayal, impose safety, labor, and environmental laws on imports that will bring those jobs back and keep them here. Then we need to reinvest in our schools to provide the skilled workers for our jobs, and stop destroying similar economic opportunities for workers in their own countries so they have no need to go anywhere else.
This winning formula made this country economically vibrant and strong without harming anyone, except the greedy corporations and amoral elected officials who supported these trade bills and who should all be replaced as they come up for re-election.
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