1. Highly-skilled US citizen STEM workers are plentiful.

Studies by researchers from
Computing Research Association (CRA),
Duke,
Georgetown University,
Harvard,
RAND Corporation,
Rochester Institute of Technology,
Rutgers,
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,
Stanford,
UC Davis,
UPenn Wharton School, and
Urban Institute
have reported that we have continually been producing far more US citizen STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) workers than we've been employing in these fields.

Examination of employment data and projections from BLS when compared with NCES (US Dept. of Education) records of degrees earned by US citizens confirms these findings.

"As late as 1987, 60K graduates were competing for about 25K open positions, according to Janet Ruhl, author of _The Programmers Survival Guide_" --- Margie Wylie _CNET_ "The skills shortage that isn't: When the rising tide floats employees' boats, employers proclaim disaster"
alternative link

In testimony to the House Science and Technology Committee, Harold Salzman reported that we've been producing as many as 3 times the numbers of STEM workers as we've been employing in these fields.   Salzman's testimony in pdf
another link to this and related information

1995-06-05: Doctorate surplus in science and engineering continues "Universities in the United States are producing about 25% more doctorates in science and engineering fields than the U.S. economy can absorb..." --- William Massy of Stanford, Charles Goldman of RAND Corp., Stanford graduate students Marc Chun and Beryle Hsiao

2009-10-28
Moira Herbst _Business Week_
Rutgers/Georgetown: No Shortage of U.S. Engineers
Laura Devaney: eSchool News
Sean Cavanagh: Education Week
Pitch Engine
Steady as She Goes: 3 Generations of Students through the Science and Engineering Pipe-Line (pdf)
"U.S. colleges and universities are graduating as many scientists and engineers as ever, according to a study released on Oct. 28 by a group of academics.   But that finding comes with a big caveat: Many of the highest-performing students are choosing careers in other fields.   The study by professors at Rutgers and Georgetown suggests that since the late 1990s, many of the top students have been lured to careers in finance and consulting... 'It is now up to science and technology firms to attract the best and the brightest graduates to come work for them.'... 'The top quintile SAT/ACT and GPA performers appear to have been dropping out of the STEM pipe-line at a substantial rate, and this decline seems to have come on quite suddenly in the mid-to-late 1990s.'"

2009-10-28
Tom Avril _Philadelphia Inquirer_
"Lerman... found that only 31% of programmers had degrees in computer science, and only 10% in engineering." --- Norm Matloff 2003-12-12 "On the Need for Reform of the H-1B Non-Immigrant Work Visa in Computer-Related Occupations" _University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform_ vol36 #4 pg 18 (quoting Robert I. Lerman of the Urban Institute 1998-02-25 High-Tech Worker Shortages and Immigration Policy: Hearing Before the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 105th Cong. 78)

Burt Barnow et al. of the Urban Institute 1998 "Final Report to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, US DoL"

Carol Veneri _MLR_ 1999 March "Can Occupational Labor Shortages Be Identified Using Available Data?" pg 15 "the labor market conditions for this period [1992–1997] indicate that neither the occupational group consisting of computer systems analysts, engineers, and scientists nor the computer programmer occupation has exhibited both higher than average employment growth and higher than average growth in wages."

Carol Ann Meares & John F. Sargent 1999 USDoC "The Digital Work-Force: Building InfoTech Skills at the Speed of Innovation" pg 7   "due to the limitations of available data, there is no way to establish conclusively whether there is, or is not, an overall IT worker shortage [or surplus]."

Peter Freemen et al. 1999 Computing Research Association "The Supply of Information Technology Workers in the United States"   "The overall unemployment rate for all specialty professions is only slightly above 2% not that much different from the IT worker unemployment rates.   But it is hardly credible that there is a shortage of all professional workers.   Thus, while unemployment rates may suggest a shortage/tightness in the IT labor market, as an indicator they are not entirely unproblematic...   there are credible reasons for questioning the evidentiary value of virtually any piece of evidence [for shortage or surplus of talent] that is available."

Richard Ellis & B. Lindsay Lowell 1999 November IT Work-Force Data Project "Assessing the Demand for Information Technology Workers" part 4 'none of the possible signs of an inadequate supply of IT workers provides unambiguous evidence that there are not enough people in the field, and several indicators -- rising numbers of experienced unemployed workers, the 'flat' compensation results reported by Computerworld, increasing enrollments in computer science -- suggest that if anything, pressures of demand on the available supply may have eased during the past year.

Peter Cappelli 2000 September Purple Squirrel "The War of Words about the IT Labor Market"   "Dozens of studies have analyzed the state of the labor market for IT workers, and the results are easy to summarize.   Researchers who study labor markets and representatives of IT employers disagree almost completely as to whether there is a shortage of IT workers.   The researchers uniformly believe that there isn't a shortage while the representatives [of the executives] vociferously believe that there is."

Rajiv Chandrasekaran 1997-11-30 _Washington Post_ pg A1 "A Seller's Market for Tech Workers: Many apply, few are interviewed, hardly any are hired" "John Otroba... American Management Systems... has no shortage of incoming resumes. When he logs onto his office computer every day, he has at least 50 in his electronic mail-box... But only about 1 in 12 resumes leads him to pick up the telephone to call the job seeker. Some don't pass that screening step. Of those who come in for an interview, fewer than a quarter are offered jobs [for a hiring rate of about 2%]."

Freeman (2006, 2007), Teitelbaum (2003, 2007), and Butz et al. (2004) point out a lack of evidence of shortages of scientists and engineers in the United States.   Butz et al. (2004) also found no evidence of shortages of federal S&E personnel...

"The image of shortage arises from 'emotion versus fact' and 'misinformation that feeds on itself' Wadhwa says.", quoted Beryl Lieff Benderly 2008-01-04 "Feeling the Elephant" in _Science_

Studies by the NRC, UCLA, Cornell, GAO, Hira at Rochester Institute of Technology, R. Rivers of the American Engineering Association, and multiple examinations by Matloff at UC Davis, and Miano for CIS, statements by Phiroz Vandrevala of Tata, and India's minister of finance Jaswant Singh, India's minister of commerce Kamal Nath, and former Fed chair Alan Greenspan have all reported that the H-1Bs are paid less than the Americans with similar abilities, credentials and experience doing similar work.
NAP
Boston Globe
2006-09-08
International Herald Tribune
2007-04-12
GAO
Star Tribune
2007-06-10
2004-03-03
Norm Matloff

* In 1997, American Management Systems, received about 50 resumes per day, but talked with fewer than 9%, interviewed a fraction of those, and made offers to only one-fourth of those interviewed, for a hire rate of about 2%.

* In 2000, Cisco received 20K applications per month but hired only 5% of the applicants. Inktomi hired only 1%, MSFT 2%, Qualcomm 5%, Red Hat Linux 1%.

* Qualcomm reported in 2001 May that they were receiving over 1K, and in 2003 February they were receiving 200 job applications every day.

* MSFT received resumes from about 100K graduating students in 2004, screened only 15K of them, interviewed only 3,500 and hired just 1K, said their spokesman.   In 2005 MSFT received about 60K resumes of every kind monthly for its 2K open positions.

* 2004-06-23 The largest corporations receive up to 25K resumes per week. 'Hiring managers are being bombarded with... up to 1,200 or 1,300 resumes per job.', said Jason Krumwiede, a founder of PeopleBonus.

* "many skilled IT workers now find themselves in a group of hundreds -- sometimes thousands -- of candidates for any particular job... 'I know one recruiter for a large insurance company who is receiving 10K resumes through the web per month.', John Challenger, CEO of staffing firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, told NewsFactor..."

* Google was receiving 1,300 resumes per day in 2007-06-26 (about 39K per month).

* "A vice president at a major bank (not affected by the mortgage market) said that the bank is receiving over 2000 résumés for every open position.", reported Diane Gubin in the summer of 2008 (late July/early August).

* "on-line agencies receive as many as 80K resumes a month.", reported Mike Qauilia 2008-08-20.

* "Northrup Grumman... gets 30K resumes a week", reported Peter Pae 2008-12-23 in the Los Angeles Times

* GE received 18K applications for 1200 jobs near Ann Arbor, MI. (reported 2010-01-14 by Nathan Bomey in Ann Arbor)

1997-11-30
2000-09-12
2001-05-27
2003-02-05
2004-06-23
2004-10-15
2005-11-16

There was no shortage of talented US citizen STEM workers.

There is no shortage of talented US citizen STEM workers.

No credible evidence of impending shortage of talented US citizen STEM workers has been produced.