No Shortage Of Technology Workers

Don’t you just love it when the strong opinion you’ve held for the past 15 years about the shortage of STEM workers is backed up by an independent government study?

This study by the the Economic Policy Institute published this morning shows what I’ve been saying for 15 years, there is no shortage of technology/STEM workers in the USA.

Wages for STEM workers have remained flat for over a decade — quickly approaching 2 decades in actuality. There is more than a minor amount of evidence demonstrated not that there is a shortage of qualified STEM workers in the IT fields. There is evidence that large companies are purposefully suppressing wages, engaging in anti-competitive practices when it comes to hiring (especially in the Bay area and Silicon Valley) with tacit non-poaching agreements and conflating the necessity to increase the number of H1B guest workers to unprecedented levels.

The only reason to push for foreign technology guestworkers instead of local talent, which is a hugely risky proposition if you are a company, is if it directly affects your bottom line.

Oddly enough, I’ve never had trouble hiring software developers and hardware developers by those two time-honoured traditions of paying a good wage and treating my employees with dignity.