The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has put up a website giving what it calls “10 Immigration Facts Everyone Can Agree To.” The so-called facts are both falsehoods and half-truths. Here is their #4:
U.S. Chamber’s Myth: “There is no shortfall of native-born Americans for open positions in the natural sciences, engineering, and computer science and thus no need for foreign high-tech workers.”
U.S. Chamber’s Fact: “Job openings are expanding at educational levels where demographic data show too few native-born students, so we can expect these shortfalls to persist in the future. Moreover, relative to other economic indicators, wages are increasing in STEM jobs requiring higher education.”
FAIR’s Fact:
A large share of STEM degree holders are currently working outside of their educational specialty. As noted by Robert N. Charette writing in IEEE Spectrum, ‘…about 15 million U.S. residents hold at least a bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline, but three-fourths of them—11.4 million—work outside of STEM.” Some have left the STEM field voluntarily, but many are also seeking for STEM jobs. Furthermore, a recent study published by the Economic Policy Center (“STEM labor shortages?”) reported that, “Further evidence that there is no shortage of workers in computer-related occupations is apparent in wage trend data. For example, from 2000 to 2011, the average hourly wage for workers possessing at least a bachelor’s degree in computer and math occupations rose less than half a percent per year, compared with the sharp wage increases we would see if a labor shortage existed in these occupations.”