- America faces a talent crisis almost as big as our jobs crisis.
- More than 13% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 still are unemployed.
- Demand for employees with science and technology training exceeds availability in the labor market.
Many would be surprised to learn
that finding a job that pays six figures in America these days isn't as hard as
you might think. But finding people qualified for those jobs is a considerably
more difficult task.
In short, America faces a talent
crisis almost as big as our jobs crisis.
Despite signs of at least some
economic recovery, more than 13%
of people between the ages of 18 and 29 are still unemployed. That number
goes up to 16.2% if you include discouraged young people who have dropped out
of the workforce. For young African- Americans, the unemployment rate stands at
22%.
How can this be with so many
American companies, particularly in the high-tech sector, offering top dollar
to attract qualified talent? Technology giant Microsoft reportedly cannot
permanently fill more than 6,000 jobs, most of them paying in the $100,000
range. Other major American corporations, including Facebook, Oracle, GE and
others are said to be facing similar challenges in their quests to fill
high-skilled positions.
Simply put, demand for employees
with science and technology training far outstrips availability in the American
labor market. The need for qualified high-skilled workers is immediate and
chronic.
American universities annually
award approximately 40,000
bachelor's degrees in computer science, but an estimated 120,000 new
computing jobs require such a degree every year. Meanwhile, the United States
grants only 65,000 visas to high-skilled workers annually -- not nearly enough
to make up for the talent gap in our science and technology-driven industries.
The fix? There are two issues that
need to be addressed: the short-term need for more qualified workers and the
long-term need for creating those new workers.
Long term, finding workers for
high-skilled jobs requires increased focus on training in the science, math,
engineering and technology fields. And it means encouraging an education
culture in which those jobs are valued.
Today, a mere 5% of U.S. high
schools offer Advanced Placement courses in computer science. Only nine states
recognize computer science as a part of their core curriculum. Those meager
offerings fail to provide adequate preparation for young people to pursue STEM
fields in college. As a result, only 8% of college freshmen ultimately receive
degrees in STEM fields. In 2008, only 4% of U.S.
bachelor's degrees were awarded in engineering. For comparison, in China
that number is 31%.
Shorter term, it is imperative for
policy-makers in Washington to increase the number of visas the United States
grants to highly skilled workers to come to America, or better yet, stay after
they receive STEM training in our colleges and universities.
American universities today award
nearly half of their graduate degrees in STEM fields to foreign nationals.
Students from all over the world come to our country to receive the benefits of
our strong higher education system. Yet, while American universities are
graduating foreign nationals in those fields, we as a nation are not granting
the number of visas necessary to place those graduates into vacant high-skilled
American jobs.
It defies all logic to give visas
to train foreign young people extensively in tech and engineering fields and
then for the host country to not reap the economic benefit of that training.
The high-tech sector is one of
America's golden geese, but if we don't find workers to fill jobs in that
critical sector of our economy, we risk seeing that goose migrate offshore. If
American companies cannot find the talent to fill jobs here, those companies
will have no choice but to outsource abroad or hire in overseas offices. That
means losing not only one high-skilled position, but also the several jobs
supporting each high-skilled position and the tax revenues that go along with
all of them.
In the case of Microsoft alone,
placing workers in those 6,000 vacant jobs today would mean moving more than
$600 million off the corporate balance sheet and into workforce salaries and
compensation -- which would stimulate the local and national economies without
spending one additional taxpayer dime.
There has been a lot of talk
recently about comprehensive immigration reform. But that's a topic that
continues to divide the nation and Washington, D.C., a city that is already
slow to act. With such division, policy-makers would be much better served to
focus on a targeted, bipartisan solution to our nation's talent crisis.
After all, keeping good-paying high
tech jobs that now sit vacant from being shipped abroad by expanding the pool
of workers who possess the skills necessary to fill those jobs here at home --
without spending one new dime of taxpayer money -- is something on which we
should be able to all agree.
Jeffrey Mazzella is the president
of the Center for
Individual Freedom.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/03/01/stem-talent-computer-immigration-column/1949365/
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