Courtesy of Mish.
Given all the media hype about the severe shortage of skills in the US and the need for more education and training, inquiring minds may be interested in alternative views.
I offer my own personal experiences at the end of the discussion.
For now, please consider a viewpoint on the alleged shortage of STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) workers by the National Review: What STEM Shortage?
The idea that we need to allow in more workers with science, technology, engineering, and math (“STEM”) background is an article of faith among American business and political elite.
But in a new report, my Center for Immigration Studies colleague Karen Zeigler and I analyze the latest government data and find what other researchers have found: The country has well more than twice as many workers with STEM degrees as there are STEM jobs. Also consistent with other research, we find only modest levels of wage growth for such workers for more than a decade. Both employment and wage data indicate that such workers are not in short supply.
In an article entitled “The Science and Engineering Shortage Is a Myth” for the March issue of The Atlantic, demographer Michael Teitelbaum of Harvard Law School summarizes the literature on STEM. “No one has been able to find any evidence indicating current widespread labor market shortages or hiring difficulties in science and engineering occupations that require bachelor’s degrees or higher,” he points out. Teitelbaum is one of the nation’s leading experts on STEM employment, former vice president of the Sloan Foundation (a philanthropic institution essentially devoted to STEM education), and author of Falling Behind? Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent, just published by Princeton University Press.
In looking at the latest government data available, my co-author and I found the following: In 2012, there were more than twice as many people with STEM degrees (immigrants and native-born) as there were STEM jobs — 5.3 million STEM jobs vs. 12.1 million people with STEM degrees. Only one-third of natives who have a STEM degree and have a job work in a STEM occupation. There are 1.5 million native-born Americans with engineering degrees not working as engineers, as well as half a million with technology degrees, 400,000 with math degrees, and 2.6 million with science degrees working outside their field. In addition, there are 1.2 million natives with STEM degrees who are not working.
Meanwhile, less than half of immigrants with STEM degrees work in STEM jobs. In particular, just 23 percent of all immigrants with engineering degrees work as engineers. Of the 700,000 immigrant STEM workers allowed into the country between 2007 and 2012, only one-third got a STEM job, about one-third got a non-STEM job, and about one-third are not working.
My Own Personal Experiences
I worked 20 years in mainframe computer programming after graduating from the University of Illinois with a degree in civil engineering. I have been through more bank mergers than one could imagine.
I was an assistant vice president at Harris Bank when Bank of Montreal bought them out. I did not like the cultural change so I left and became an independent consultant. My first contract was at Chase. That job ended when Chase and Chemical merged.
Soon thereafter, I was as First National Bank of Chicago which became First Chicago, then First USA, then Bank One, now Chase. I was there though Bank One.
I was on a project at US Bank in Minneapolis involving a merger or sale of a Piper Jeffrey trading system. …
