Immigration advocates constantly claim that we have a shortage of workers for jobs in STEM (science, math, engineering, and technology). A recent report by the National Academies maintained this was true, and that we need keep keep importing foreign STEM workers.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) disagrees by noting that the statistics pertaining to STEM employment do not support the view that we have a shortage of qualified STEM personnel in the U.S. First, CIS notes, the wages of STEM workers, hourly and annually, have risen very little during the past two decades. This wage stagnation is completely inconsistent with a shortage of workers.
What explains it is that U.S. companies have significantly ignored qualified people in the U.S. (native and foreign-born) while they have welcomed a steady stream of new foreign workers, whose numbers keep wages down.
Secondly, as CIS points out, these lower wages have discouraged many U.S. residents from applying for work. Here are the figures derived from the 2022 American Community Survey: Currently there are 9.5 million STEM degree holders in the U.S. who are working in other fields, and another 2.1 million who are either unemployed or who have dripped out of the workforce.
Over and over the story is the same, those who cry “worker shortage” are typically people with a shortage of concern for working Americans. Their bottom line is cheap labor above all else.
Read more at cis.org