Congress Betrays The U.S. STEM Worker Once Again

stemThe House of Representatives is out to destroy the American Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Professional. Republicans passed H.R. 6429 with the oxymoron title, STEM Jobs Act of 2012. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and this bill gives 55,000 foreigners a year who graduate from an American university with a Masters or PhD in these fields an employment sponsored green card. Democrats didn't like it, not because it will labor arbitrage American Technical Professionals and lock out some Americans from even being accepted into Masters and PhD university programs. No, Democrats don't like the idea of separating the agenda of giving those here illegally legal status from the corporate lobbyist never ending demand for more foreign guest worker Visas and turning the American higher education system into a glorified green card ATM. Democrats believe they will never get their unlimited migration agenda through Congress without sacrificing the American Science and Technology professional to the globalization wolves.

The claim is STEM jobs create other jobs. This is true, these professional occupations can spawn other jobs, as is typical with an employment multiplier effect derived from more disposable income as well as advanced research and development itself. Although STEM's multiplier effect assumes manufacturing and supportive positions are in the United States, which these days isn't usually the case. The problem is these Science and Engineering jobs are not positions in addition to, but in place of. In other words, we have worker substitution going on where Americans are fired, employers continue with their institutionalized age, sex and U.S. citizen discrimination and simply replace the fired American with a young, typically male, foreign one. Displacing an American from that job with a foreign one does nothing to increase jobs, help the economy, or innovate. Either worker can innovate and in fact many U.S. patent and copyright holders have actually been displaced already. Innovation is work sponsored. If one doesn't have a job in R&D, odds are they will not get their ideas into the market place or even registered. Worker substitution generally hurts the economy and it obviously hurts the worker being displaced. That's what is currently happening.

The great STEM shortage lie has been going on for years, in spite of overwhelming statistics there is no shortage of Americans with STEM college degrees.

To show what a ridiculous lie this is, let's look at some statistics. There are less jobs in STEM in 2011 than there were in 1997. The BLS maintains occupational employment facts and figures. Employment in many STEM fields has actually decreased in the United States, while the number of Americans with college degrees in STEM fields has increased. First the below graph are STEM jobs as categorized by the BLS occupational employment survey. Since 1999, there has only been a gain of 763,930 STEM jobs. Managerial occupations in STEM has actually declined by -33,080 jobs from 1999 to 2011. Below is a graph of employment in the major STEM occupations that are not managerial.

 

stem employment

 

The below graph showing the annual change in STEM employment, not managerial, should shock you. The growth is minimal and has been for over a decade. One would never guess this fact from the rancor and rhetoric coming from lobbyists and their mouthpiece politicians.

 

stem chg annual

 

From 2010 to 2011, the last year available for occupational employment statistics, STEM gained 145,930 jobs. There were -370,810 STEM jobs lost in 2010. If you think leaving out those related managerial positions is why employment growth is so low, think again. Not only have STEM managerial occupations have actually declined by -33,080 from 1999 to 2011, there were only 20,010 additional managerial jobs in computers & mathematical areas and a loss of -63,680 engineering managerial occupations in the same time period.

The BLS counts foreign guest workers, permanent residents, people here illegally and U.S. citizens in their employment and occupational statistics. What may not be realized is the BLS counts thousands of H-1B and L-1 Visa holders as employed in the above employment by occupation figures.

The H-1B Visa is called the outsourcing Visa by the Indian BPO industry for good reason. Not only are jobs offshore outsourced, these Visas are also used to provide other businesses with cheap foreign STEM workers and technology transfer STEM related projects offshore. An H-1B Visa is good for six years and if the employer sponsors the worker for a green card, can be extended until legal permanent residency status is obtained. H-1Bs are renewed every three years and the table below shows the number H-1B three year approvals in the above STEM identified occupations since 2006.

 

h-1b Visas

 

The thing to notice is the number of H-1Bs approved each year exceeds the increase in total employment in these occupations. For example, in 2011 there as an employment increase of 122,770 in computer and mathematical occupations, yet H-1Bs approved, just for that year in these two categories was 140,841. In 2010 STEM lost -370,810 jobs, yet 124,182 H-1B STEM Visas were approved in the same year.

H-1B Visas are good for 6 years, but can be extended beyond that if there is an application for a green card. Believe this or not, the USCIS does not track on how many H-1B Visa Holders there are in the country at any moment in time. Yes, in the days past 9/11, they don't track foreign guest workers in this country. By adding up three years of H-1B approvals, we know there are at least 446,582 H-1B Visa holders working in STEM occupations by 2011. This implies all additional employment is going primarily to Visa holders and these figures also imply a large number of Americans are being unjustly fired and losing their careers way too early. If employment as an aggregate does not increase past the number of Visas issued, this means by work flows others are losing their jobs. We clearly have employee churn to explain new college graduate and foreign worker hires. It's clear worker substitution is occurring in the United States.

H-1B Visas are just one element by which foreigners are allowed to work in the United States. Currently foreigners graduating in STEM have 28 months working under the OPT program in the United States, on student Visas. There are already 20,000 employer based H-1B Visas set aside for STEM graduates of American universities. Additionally, H.R. 6429 is not an actual green card, but a permanent resident Visa conditionally based on the foreign worker staying with one employer for five years. Someone cannot form a new company when they are tethered to one employer based on immigration status for five years.

Microsoft, one of the biggest lobbyists for more foreign workers, has fired thousands of Americans with degrees in STEM. IBM the same. Pfizer forced their STEM workers to train their replacements before being fired, a common practice. HP has laid off 27,000 workers, mostly STEM this year alone and last year laid off 28,000. Executives have routinely touted their age discrimination agenda against those in STEM. To continue their discrimination and labor arbitrage unbated, these multinational corporations require an unlimited supply of young, naive STEM workers. Seventy percentage of H-1B workers are between the ages of 25 to 34 and we suspect disproportionately male.

The National Science Foundation keeps track of the number of STEM graduates and these figures should astound you. The last year we have statistics for is 2009. Most STEM jobs require a Bachelors of Science (BS). This is in spite of employers making increasingly impossible demands of workers. Below is the National Science Foundation's statistics on the number of Science and Engineering Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate degrees conferred from American accredited higher education institutions. Excluded from their statistics would be trade schools and degrees in technology, such as EET, which implies the degree count is much lower than the real number of STEM degrees awarded in the United States each year.

 

stem degrees us

 

Below are Science and Engineering degrees awarded to those who are U.S. citizens or have green cards, legal permanent residency status. As we can see there were 614,636 Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate degrees awarded to U.S. Citizens and green card holders in 2011, yet there were only 145,930 jobs gained in all of STEM in 2011. In other words, the United States already produces far more STEM than can be employed.

 

stem degree citizenship

 

Even if we drill down further and just look at Computer Science and Mathematics degrees the results are the same. There were 69,108 BS, MS and PhD degrees awarded in Computer Science and Mathematics to U.S. citizens and green card holders in 2009. The 2009 Computer & Mathematical employment losses were -4,570 jobs. This broad occupational category includes I.T., support, network administration and web design. Computer occupations has a host of jobs which require at best trade school, associates degrees and not full bore computer science Bachelors. or higher skill sets. Clearly we graduate more U.S. citizens in STEM skills than are jobs available. This fact is backed up by a host of wage and unemployment rates for STEM workers. Additionally, the BLS doesn't count those forced out of their fields as unemployment STEM professionals. The minute that experienced and degreed individual takes a job at Walmart to try to survive, they are classified as an unskilled retail trade worker.

Even before the recession, less than a third of S&E degree holders were working in areas requiring or even closely associated with their degree. A full 65% of STEM graduates were in other occupations after just two years of graduating. By 2011, 53% of all college graduates couldn't either find any job or a position in their field of study. Clearly our statistics from before the 2008 recession imply things are much worse today. In fact, 70% of jobs created today require no college education at all.

H.R. 6429 targets computer and information sciences and support services, engineering, mathematics and statistics, and physical sciences occupations, the very middle class jobs most needed by Americans. Don't expect this to be the last of Congress passing laws to make sure U.S. workers are thrown out of the careers, it's their top priority of 2013, under the guise of comprehensive immigration reform. This is what politicians mean really by immigration reform. It's not humanitarian or even catering to special interest groups. Comprehensive immigration reform is all about flooding America with even more workers when we cannot employ the people who are already here.

American labor arbitrage has been going on for some time, as this documentary shows. The statistics for the last decade prove the entire U.S. middle class is being hollowed out and much of it due to global labor arbitrage. Institutionalized discrimination, offshore outsourcing, bad trade deals and flooding U.S. labor markets through immigration are alive and well and our Congress is more than willing to assist further in the full bore assault on America's middle class.

One cannot grow the economy by firing American workers. Yet, lobbyists spin white paper fictional statistical snow on STEM almost monthly trying to claim the opposite, all to further their global labor arbitrage cause. Firing American workers does not spawn innovation or help the economy. It clearly doesn't work. If it did American would obviously have a meteoric rise in economic growth by now. By any statistical measure at this point, worker displacement and substitution at any occupational level is very obviously not good for America.

Meta: 

Comments

citations, references upon request

All statistics were derived by the author, from 1st principles, for this article. Sources are cited in graphs and there is more much detail derived which was not used in the above article for readability purposes. For more details on the statistics used for this article, please leave a comment and we'll respond.

Stem Workers, MSFT, KAAW and a Duel to Keep America At Work

Amen.

This is why it is up to us to find a way to spread the word about what is really happening.

The only way I know to do it is to find a way to bring it to a head in the media so that all of the people of America understand what is happening and why it will have a major impact on them.

http://keepamericaatwork.com/?page_id=208796

I attempt to do so via that link.

As for the impact to America.

Think about this.

If you are a small business owner, say a mechanic shop.
You might make 50,000 per year for yourself and you might pay your mechanics around 15 per hour and your helpers around 8 per hour and you might bill 65 or 75 per hour for labor.

The STEM industry jobs are some of the highest paying jobs as I attempt to describe in this article.

http://keepamericaatwork.com/?p=208652

How many customers do you think you will have if the middle class is destroyed similar to what happened to me when I made 113,000 in 2002 and 6,000 in 2012?

register Virgil

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superb information !

As a mechanical engineer who has spent much of his so-called career either unemployed or underemployed, I agree with everything you said.

There is no shortage of engineers. But no matter how many engineers are willing to grovel for crummy jobs, employers believe even more groveling is needed.

actually shocked after looking at the statistics

While it took me a day to run all of these statistics, reporters have NO EXCUSE to not report the facts on STEM employment. One cannot even easily find the statistics used in this article, reporters have every responsibility to obtain accurate facts and figures and most do not! Google is front loaded with pure fiction, statistical lies, pumped in by lobbyists their 50¢ an hour SEO hires.

As I went through the statistics I was really disgusted for they are much worse than I originally thought.

You're not alone and folks, anyone, if you are not familiar with the requirements to obtain a U.S. BS in Mechanical engineering, Chemical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, let us just tell you it's one big bitch!

These degrees are very hard to master, to obtain and one studies their ass off to get them. BS degrees are 120+ credit hours and some schools have no padding, no liberal arts, "easy A" courses to buffer with.

In other words, people work very hard, study hard, must be bright else they couldn't have graduated, spent hours, thousands of dollars obtaining their degrees to face global labor arbitrage and then age discrimination. One cannot labor arbitrage people who has this level of skill and expertise and expect anything but ....well....
what HP has become today, destroyed, a shell of the engineering company they used to be. Same with IBM if anyone is familiar with their very crappy work in a host of areas and of course....hmmmm, now about that Windows Phone, Surface, OS? Howz that going for ya labor arbitraging Microsoft? In other words, by displacing, churning, labor arbitraging U.S. technical workers, over the long term, these same companies are succumbing to the competition who do not practice such evil employee policies. Think S. Korea labor arbitrages their engineers? Not even close, it's S. Korean engineers preferred, every step of the way. This is way beyond their employee granted stock options being flat, plenty of other companies have none or are negative.

thank you

thank you for your work on this. As a working mechanical engineer, age 46, I'd just like to supply my personal history. I have personally seen 100's of my fellow Americans, blue collar and of course over the past 15 years my fellow engineers outsourced mercilessly. I'm getting close to that age where the next layoff may well be my last in the field. I was lucky enough to have only been let go in the downturn of 2008 but i have no illusions about retiring from this field.

Personally I have seen only outsourcing and have not personally experienced being displaced by a foreign guest worker but I know others who have.

The last company that laid me off in 2008 is named Winchester Electronics. A company that at one time employed 1000+ people in the state of Connecticut. A state that in my youth was noted for manufacturing. Please google this company and just note how many Free trade adjustment assistance they have been granted. By the way, they are now owned by the Audax Co. a offshoot of Bain Capital started by former Mitt employees or co-workers.

I've seen honest hard working middle class people just trying to do the right thing and pay their bills thrown under the bus. It has truly disgusted and radicalized me.

thank you for your good work.

Several years ago I got a

Several years ago I got a Master's degree in IT. It took eight years and thousands of dollars. Thanks to these visas, however, nobody is hiring American programmers. I'm stuck in a dead-end job making less than half of what I should. I've taken exams and gotten certifications (more money down the drain), I've sent out a pile of resumes every week, but not one interview. Not one.

Companies like Microsoft are saving some payroll expenses in the short term. They're also ruining the future of this country. By using the equivalent of migrant labor to do jobs that Americans are happy to do, they're pulling the rug out from under generations of well-educated, motivated, hard-working, and intelligent people. These H-1B visas ought to be illegal, but like everything else associated with "globalization," the law is whatever the highest bidders say it is. As far as I'm concerned, these companies have cheated me out of my chosen career.

Amen

But it doesn't have to be that way.

Tell your story at Keep America At Work.
Join with us to challenge Microsoft to a Duel to Keep America At Work

We can reverse this but we must unite, not cower in fear of those that have money that control the media.

Thanks Robert

Robert, this is an excellent story. Thanks for your research and your excellent delivery. If I would have anything to add, I would discuss how the IEEE and the IEEE-USA, organizations that collect membership fees from disenfranchised US STEM workers, are leading the charge of betraying the US STEM worker.

I am a 2002 graduate of

I am a 2002 graduate of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from a top-20 university. Completed both my degrees in 4 years in the top quartile of my class. Sent out thousands of resumes to Silicon Valley tech firms and elsewhere, only to receive almost no response, or a response claiming the job requisition had been cancelled and that I should apply for other jobs. Meanwhile, employers who didn't need top calibre skills rejected me for being 'overqualified' for the few jobs they had available (not that it mattered, those jobs were receiving hundreds, sometimes thousands of resumes).

It breaks my heart every time I hear the Silicon Valley employers are claiming a labour shortage without even bothering to open their resume queues and find them filled with folks like me. I could accept the situation if the employers interviewed me, tested me, and found I was less qualified than a competitor. That's the merit principle in action. But to just ignore me while claiming a need for foreign guest workers strikes me as completely unnacceptable.

to the U.S. STEM writing comments

We know your stories are true and please leave them for you matter. You might also start raising hell. Organize, go to your Congressional representatives town hall meetings, show up to their offices in person. Beyond the AFL-CIO DPE and the teamsters, believe that or not, there isn't any real organization out there representing your labor interests. The lack of political power is precisely how and why politicians feel it's perfectly fine to step all over you, offshore outsource your jobs, displace you with foreign guest workers, offer stipends so low you can't even rent a shoe box while in graduate school and on and on.

Here's the kicker. U.S. universities are the best in the world, therefore your education is the best in the world, therefore you are the best in the world.

Powerful Info - how can we package it for decision makers

Thank you Robert for your insightful and powerful article. Your information is too important and timely to American techs and their families who have lost our jobs, homes, and more because of the mythical skilled labor shortage /labor arbitrage scam. Does your organization or others on this thread have PR and Government Affairs horsepower to shop this story with the media and with the right influencers in DC?

We're an economics site

We write about economics and labor economics (check out our articles!).

References used for the statistics are mostly linked above. USCIS H-1B info is in separate reports to Congress, bi-annual, titled "Characteristics of H-1B Specialty Workers" for Fiscal years, the last being FY11. Here is FY 2011, which has the data in tables sprinkled through the report.

The Economic Populist is officially the media. We're a news source and often are cited by much larger organizations. Hopefully others will stop publishing spin and dig out these statistics, the same as I just did.

I've seen some ridiculous pieces that are beyond belief statistical spin, not only in the press, but those same lobbyist talking points come out of the mouths of Congressional representatives on their sites and on the House and Senate floor. Sad, which goes to show how the American scientific community is overall going downhill. Spin is presented as fact and the ethical code of "thou shalt not spin thy statistics" clearly isn't being followed. Downright immoral.

The reality is most STEM jobs require a BS only, although they usually want some sort of work experience, such as internships and co-ops as well as mastery. There are some jobs where a MS is listed on the job requirements, but it must be a U.S. MS, which is 30 credit hours past the 120 STEM credit hours at the better schools. Still, many employers consider those with BS degrees in those jobs due to excellence and previous experience.

Obviously Academia jobs often require a PhD, yet tenure track have disappeared and Post Docs are covered under the J-1 Visa as well as Academia has unlimited H-1B Visas, they are exempt. Teaching positions, including Academia, universities, are not included in these BLS occupational categories utilized for this article.

Many other countries MS is really a MSc, which can be 120 credit hours (the same as a U.S. BS degree) to only 90 credit hours. Additionally there is much less design and labs requirements in other nations. To make it more confusing some schools abroad are matching the U.S. BS and MS requirements while other schools in that nation do not.

There also are some advanced research jobs which require a PhD. Still, even BS degreed people work in research labs, but again, it's talent and experience dependent quite often.

That said, very obviously one doesn't necessarily need even a BS degree to innovate, as evidenced by our now labor arbitraging Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Google search was developed by two PhD students who did complete their MS but got their idea while thinking about PhD dissertations. I should also mention Sergey Brin was brought over to the U.S. as a child, which clearly isn't the same thing as coming over to the states as labor arbitrage cannon fodder in terms of opportunities to innovate.

Additionally, the United States has an unlimited Visa, the "O" Visa for true excellence, although those achievements had to be accomplished before entry into the U.S.

Honestly, this was so easy to examine this statistics, even though I look at economic and labor statistics daily, I really was shocked as I researched this article to see how obvious it was not only is there no worker shortage, STEM occupations are not even really growing by size!

A final note, most H-1Bs are BS degreed but unfortunately the USCIS does not require proof or U.S. equivalent degrees listed. Therefore those BS degrees could be a BSc which is more like trade school in many countries, or at best community college here and I already discussed the issues with a "MS" as above. A PhD is usually a PhD, it's the terminal degree and it's merit is more the school, the adviser and most importantly the quality of the publications and research performed by the person holding the Doctorate.

So, to present this material to lawmakers one needs to write them, visit their offices and prepare your own documentation. I can tell you what corporate lobbyists do (beyond give millions in campaign donations and high paying jobs to friends and family members).

Corporate lobbyists put together media packages, which #1 consist of a 1 page flier with "talking points" they want to be "known". Now those talking points are very often fiction, spun with some biased paper or research by some propped up person posing as a research "group" or think tank and so on. That said, they always give 1 page flier talking points to Congressional staff with their other 1 page agenda. Then, they "repeat the lie" over and over until the "lie becomes truth". Lobbyists also actually write legislation they want "introduced" by a Congressional representative (and you thought Congress wrote their own bills, ha ha).

What regular people need to do is "repeat the truth until it becomes truth again" for corporate lobbyists have been spoon feeding politicians pure bunk (along with their money) for over 30 years in order to labor arbitrage U.S. STEM.

The other thing lobbyists do is divide and conquer. While this is clearly a labor issue they use the phrase "racist xenophobe" to divide people and confuse the issues in order to get their agenda through. In other words, if you want your career secured, well, then, you must be a card carrying KKK member. This technique divides various political fractions who normally would join forces on labor issues.

So, even as an individual, you need to make an appointment, put together a 1 page flier of talking points, then print out your back up research papers and there are many, from the GAO to Urban Institute to many other groups which are statistically valid and walk in and let it be known. Then the only thing that really can move Congress past corporate lobbyists and agendas is to shut down Congress by protests. That's voice, phone, sit ins, fax and general raising of hell (legally). It seems one can have the entire country in outright revolt but all Congress as well as this administration listens to are lobbyists, their campaign donors and uber-rich class.

I'd say again it does seem the most active union is the AFL-CIO DPE and maybe one can start a STEM, not workplace affiliated branch. One thing is very obvious, U.S. STEM really needs some labor representation, power to organize and thus protect U.S. STEM career (labor) interests.

Excellent article, but author overlooks VERY important point

Robert Oak,

I enjoyed reading your article and thought that, overall, it was excellent.

I would like to point out, however, that you have overlooked some important points. First, your article mentions the L-1 visa but once. Just once. Second, your article does not mention the TN-1 visa at all. Not even once. Third, and perhaps most importantly, it has been estimated that the number of L-1 visa holders in the USA is about six or seven times the number of H-1B visa holders. I wrote "estimated" because even the Federal government has no clue as to their number. Why? Because even the Federal government does not compile or maintain records on the number of L-1 visa holders currently living in the USA. Incredible, but true. Hence, the H-1B scandal is but "the tip of the iceberg." The actual number of visa holders is far greater than is commonly reported, making the scandal that much worse.

Relatedly, I would like to point out that the true unemployment rate in the USA is now about 23%:

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts

Finally, I feel compelled to add this:

https://www.numbersusa.com/content/news/november-1-2012/study-two-thirds...

-- Paul D. Bain
PaulBain@PObox.com

conservative estimates on purpose, you're right on L-1, TN Visas

This is true, I ignored the L-1 Visa simply because obtaining valid statistics wasn't found, the same with TN-1 Visas. There are many foreign guest worker Visas being abused, use to labor arbitrage Americans, worker substitution, which are ignored for this article, including H-2B Visas.

L-1 Visas are "inter company transfer" Visas. A foreign parent company uses these Visas to send employees to a FCDC and employers, in particular Indian "body shops", abuse these extensively, you are correct. EPI just wrote an open letter on the abuses of L-1.

TN Visas are unlimited "professional" Visas from Mexico and Canada under NAFTA and are also heavily abused.

Another known highly conservative estimate in this article is the number of H-1B Visa holders working and in the country. That estimate is low simply because it was the lower bound of what could be statistically verified. The real number is probably double that amount.

The reason the estimates are low and many Visas are ignored is to ensure the statistics of this article are valid, cannot be argued with. Lobbyists spend millions trying to repress information that is contained in this post, as do other "special interest groups", the least of which is immigration attorneys who make a huge profit off of importing foreign workers.

As we've said, many, many times, Shadowstats does not publish their methodology, therefore we cannot validate those figures. Upon occasion we calculate out our own real unemployment rate from BLS data but we can never come up with the high figures Shadowstats does. It doesn't mean Shadowstats is invalid, but we cannot determine how those figures are derived, therefore we do not use them, for we only publish statistics we can validate.

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The NumbersUSA post is referring to this CIS study, Who Got Jobs During the Obama Presidency?.

I've read their study there is a huge problem. The BLS only counts those not born in the United States against those born within the borders of the U.S. Therefore, foreign born means children brought over by their parents at a very young age, it means naturalized citizens born outside of the United States, permanent residents (green cards) and the foreign born also includes foreign guest workers and illegal workers.

So, the CIS study classifies the foreign born as immigrants. This really isn't quite valid. I wouldn't call someone who was simply born outside of the United States an immigrant, especially if they are naturalized citizens or brought over as very young children. There is a huge difference between this group and say a L-1 Visa worker.

The problem is we need accurate labor statistics by immigration status, bottom line. Our government sticks their head in the sand and won't even determine the numbers. That's just wrong and so often we hear some philosophy of one cannot ask a worker's immigration status because it might "offend" them or "cause them to run back into the shadows". This is ridiculous, it's the U.S. labor market, the U.S. labor statistics and we need accurate data on what is going on, which in turn can influence policy.

Fairly obvious politicians in D.C. do not want this information known for it if was tabulated, one can imagine how fast most of America would be outraged, consider our never ending job crisis. Bottom line, statistical agencies are simply supposed to obtain the statistics and not impose a view or philosophy on those statistics.

It is one thing to know the facts, another to craft policy as a result of those facts. Let us simply know the real statistics, please. Write your Congressional representatives demanding immigration status be asked by the Census for our labor/employment surveys.

Beyond this flaw of the CIS study, I've looked over their data and it appears to be straight out of the BLS statistics, which is more than valid to simply tabulate those figures.

Microsoft = failure

This is an interesting story on how Microsoft eventually is going down.

More interesting there is a pattern. Corporations hire H-1Bs, labor arbitrage their engineers, churn them, fire them and replace them with younger, cheaper ones.

Anyone else notice that eventually they lose market share, stop being a leader? I can think of a host of companies that labor arbitraged their engineers and then this happened, HP being the largest example. Lucent, Motorola, the list goes on and on.

Silicon Valley's dirrty little secret, age bias

Silicon Valley's dirty little secret, age bias is a new article out, so finally STEM institutionalized and endorsed age discrimination hits the MSM.

Questions

1.) When you separate industrial engineers from generic engineering, what's the result?

2.) Do finance and consulting count as math jobs?

3.) Any statistics on the relative strength of resumes of Americans vs. foreigners?

4.) The large percentages of STEM workers who don't go into a related field, is that by choice or forced by unemployment?

5.) Why should a company hire an American as opposed to a foreigner?

answers

1. 2011 industrial engineers: 211,490
1999 industrial engineers: 155,910
a whopping gain over 12 years of 55,580.

During the same time period there have been around the same amount of BS industrial engineering degrees conferred to those with U.S. citizenship. That isn't counting the MS and PhD additional degrees.

2. Depends. These are by occupations, jobs titles. So a Physics PhD working as a quant in finance would probably be still classified as a statistician, which would be STEM or a mathematician, which would be STEM, mathematics, "other".

3. Since most of these are "young" one would have to go by education and again, U.S. universities are ranking the best in the world as a rule and the educational requirements are more in depth, longer, more credit hours. The U.S. also has more work experience with labs, projects, internships, co-ops, undergrad work at the University. Working in America previously, the U.S. is still considered the most advanced STEM industry in the world.

4. That is forced, a large part, then income is part of it. Wage arbitrage causes some to look elsewhere to a middle class income.

5. The fact you are even asking that says volumes. Heard of citizenship, of a domestic economy and the need for a nation-state to employ their citizens? That one of the primarily responsibilities of businesses inside a nation-state is to provide employment to the people who live in that nation-state?