Ignore the hype. There are few shortages of skilled workers in America.

Summary: The shortage of STEM workers is a zombie myth too politically useful to die. But here’s data that should kill it. Worse, it implies we might soon see a surplus of highly educated workers, undercutting the more education as a solution to automation story. We’ll need to consider more radical ideas.

“While there are over 500,000 computing jobs currently unfilled in the U.S., only 42,969 computer science students graduated from U.S. universities into the workforce last year.”

— “Computer Science in K-12 Classrooms” by the Computer Science Education Coalition, one of the many lobbying groups funded by corporations to ensure cheap labor. Median wages for people with PhDs in computer science were $121,300 in 2013, down 7% from 2008. There is no shortage, even in this hottest of fields.

Wages show the supply & demand for people with Ph.D.s.
Their wages are falling, so there is no shortage.

For years corporations and their paid propagandists at think-tanks have bombarded us with news about the shortage of workers in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), which will cripple America in the 21st century. Looking to the future, we’re told growth in these fields would offset some of the massive unemployment from automation.

Oddly, despite the ludicrously high numbers of unfilled jobs reported, wages in these fields have not been rapidly rising (excerpt in a few hot specialties, as it takes time for students to graduate into them). Has the law of supply and demand been repealed? No, since not only is there no shortage, but even Ph.D.s in these fields are in excess supply and seeking employment in other fields, or at jobs in their field not requiring their level of training.

Worse, the data suggests that in the future we might have an oversuppy of highly educated workers (the large surplus of attorneys might be the exemplar of what’s to come).

What we see here is corporations using the news media and government to ensure an ample supply of cheap skilled workers. An entire movement has been built on this fake story.

Here’s the latest of the articles presenting the facts about higher education in the second decade of the 21st century.

“Job-Seeking Ph.D. Holders Look to Life Outside School”
by Douglas Belkin in the Wall Street Journal
“New doctorate holders are grappling with dwindling employment prospects.”

“…The percentage of new doctorate recipients without jobs or plans for further study climbed to 39% in 2014 from 31% in 2009, according to a National Science Foundation survey released in April. Median salaries for midcareer Ph.D.s working full time fell 6% between 2010 and 2013.

“The reason: supply and demand. Production of doctorates in the U.S. climbed 28% in the decade ending in 2014 to an all-time high of 54,070. That surge has come as more Americans see a postgraduate degree as a hedge against stagnating wages and unemployment in an economy demanding increasingly specific skills and expertise.

“Meanwhile, the academic job market — the largest employer of Ph.D.s — continues to wither as many universities move away from the model of only employing tenured professors and toward using greater numbers of relatively lowly paid adjunct teachers.

“In addition, critical pockets of public and private funding that have traditionally supported jobs for doctorate holders in their research fields have dwindled. The pharmaceuticals industry, for example — the largest employer of chemists in the country — has moved much of its research overseas, shedding 300,000 jobs in the U.S. in recent years. Salaries for chemists with Ph.D.s fell 12% between 2004 and 2014, according to the American Chemical Society.

“…Michael Teitelbaum, who studies the scientific workforce as a senior adviser to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that supports research in education {said} ‘When you can import an international workforce or outsource research, you have a buyer’s market.’

“…their median incomes have been falling. Computer scientists earned $121,300 in 2013, down from $129,839 in 2008; engineers saw a drop to $120,000 from $125,511 and social scientists fell to $85,000 from $90,887.

“…The decline in full-time hiring in universities has resulted in tens of thousands of Ph.D. holders teaching classes for around $3000 each without benefits. …

“As a result, many graduate students are considering careers outside the academy or their research field. This has led to credential inflation as Ph.D.s fill jobs traditionally held by professionals without such lofty degrees. For instance the number of Ph.D.s applying to teach at private high schools has jumped between 10% and 20% over the last five years, according to Devereaux McLatchey, president of Carney, Sandoe & Associates which is one of the nation’s largest recruiters for private high schools.

“…Production of doctorates in the U.S. climbed 28% in the decade ending in 2014 to an all-time high of 54,070. …”

Another perspective: corps use H1-B visas to depress wages

Not content with shipping jobs overseas and pushing to generate a surplus of workers in America, corporations import more workers to depress wages in skilled fields:

“The H1-B Visas Don’t Help American STEM Graduates”
By Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Wall Street Journal
“It’s a myth that there is a shortage of qualified Americans to fill jobs in STEM.”

“…To support your belief that American workers should receive no protections, you recycle the myth that there is a shortage of qualified Americans to fill jobs in STEM—science, technology, engineering and math—and then demand more guest workers as substitutes. Your evidence for this claim is that the government “received a record 233,000 requests from American business for the 85,000 H-1B visas available.” But the only thing this statistic proves is that companies prefer low-wage, bonded guest workers over higher-paid Americans.

“Each year, the U.S. graduates twice as many students with STEM degrees as are hired in STEM occupations. Contrary to the suggestion that these students are finding better, higher-paying jobs, the opposite is true. About 35% of science students, 55% of technology students, 20% of engineering students and 30% of math students who recently graduated are now working in jobs that don’t require any four-year college degree. As further proof of no shortage, wages in the profitable IT industry have been largely flat for more than a decade.

“Yet despite the enormous supply of job-seeking Americans, two-thirds of entry-level hires in the tech industry are now going to foreign workers.

“That is because the H-1B visa is not a high-skilled immigration program. It operates as a low-wage nonimmigrant temporary visa, undercutting the jobs and wages of highly qualified Americans. Just recently, Southern California Edison laid off hundreds of loyal employees and forced them to train the H-1B guest workers hired to replace them. One of those replaced American workers was a mother with a physical disability caring for two children. …”

Conclusions

We find it difficult to prepare for the future because we cannot clearly see the present through all the lies we are told.

There are no broad shortages of skilled workers in America (the slow growth of wages in almost every field shows that). Worse, there are already signs of surpluses in many kinds of workers with both undergraduate and advanced degrees — so that ramping up education is unlikely to compensate for the jobs lost in the coming wave of automation.

We need to begin considering more radical solutions. Such as ways to generate faster economic growth and jobs, and support those that lose their jobs. We have dealt with the severe transitions of previous industrial revolutions, and can do so with this one. Keep our eyes open, our minds clear, and stand together.

Other articles about the STEM “crisis”

• The shortage of STEM workers: another bogus crisis crafted to benefit the 1%.
• “The STEM Crisis Is a Myth” by Robert N. Charette in IEEE Spectrum, 30 August 2013 — “Forget the dire predictions of a looming shortfall of scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians.”
• “The STEM Crisis: Reality or Myth?” by Michael Anf in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11 November 2013.
• “The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage” by Michael S. Teitelbaum (demographer) in The Atlantic, 19 March 2014 — “”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 bachelors degrees or higher … Most studies report that real wages in many — but not all — science and engineering occupations have been flat or slow-growing,”

For More Information

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts describing the 3rd industrial revolution, about inequality and social mobility, and especially these…

• 50 years of warnings about the new industrial revolution. It’s here. Ignore the naysayers.
• The coming Great Extinction – of jobs.
• Nike swooshs us into a future of fewer jobs, low pay.
• Happy Meals: now with 20% less people! — McDonald’s automates.
• The airlines’ crippling pilot shortage: another bogus “skills” crisis.
• Look at the retail sector and see the power of automation in the new industrial revolution.

 

See these books to learn about the new industrial revolution now in progress…

• The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (2014).
• Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford (2015).
• The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts by Richard and Daniel Susskind (2016).