Facebook has spent millions of dollars trying to get massive amnesty legislation that would include huge increases in the number of guest-worker permits, which would lower the wages of tech workers. However, Facebook can’t show that there is a shortage of American high-tech workers.
The fact that a major news outlet asked the company about these claims may say as much as Facebook’s refusal to show proof of the so-called shortage.
Something strange has happened since tech industry experts asked why the mainstream media were giving the high-tech industry a “free pass” when they said there was a serious shortage of high-tech workers in the United States.
Mainstream news outlets like CBS have finally started to look into these claims and ask questions about them. Even the pro-business magazine Businessweek is no longer letting the industry off the hook.
In an article called “The Tech Worker Shortage Doesn’t Exist,” Businessweek quoted some of the top experts on the topic, like Hal Salzman, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University. Salzman said, “There’s no evidence in any way, shape, or form that there’s a shortage in the conventional sense.” This means that when the tech industry says there is a shortage, it just wants cheaper labour.
When Businessweek asked Facebook for evidence to back up its claims that there is a dire shortage of American high-tech workers, a spokesman reportedly said, “We look forward to hearing more specifics about the President’s plan and how it will affect the skills gap that threatens the competitiveness of the tech sector.”
Salzman has pointed out in a number of reports, as Businesweek noted, that when the number of petroleum engineers “failed to keep up with the growth in oil exploration,” employers offered better pay and the shortage problem went away because “more people started becoming petroleum engineers.”
Salzman pointed out, though, that the tech industry doesn’t want to pay tech workers more.
Breitbart News has written about the many studies and expert opinions that all agree there are too many high-tech workers in the United States. Salzman helped write a study that found “every year, only half of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) college graduates get jobs in STEM fields.”
Another study by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) found that “from 2007 to 2012, STEM employment “averaged only 105,000 jobs per year,” while the U.S. admitted about 129,000 immigrants with STEM degrees.” According to the report, this means that “the number of new immigrants with STEM degrees admitted each year is higher than the growth in STEM employment as a whole.”