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Posted by
admin on Friday, July 01 @ 17:29:59 EDT
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ITAA Study Reveals High Unemployment and Minority Overrepresentation in IT
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admin on Friday, July 01 @ 17:29:59 EDT
: " ITAA Study Reveals High Unemployment and Minority Overrepresentation in IT Fields
While bemoaning high unemployment, especially among females, and underrepresentation of native-born workers of all races within the IT job market in their recent study, ITAA continues to advocate for the H-1B program, which is a root cause of these problems.
Sacramento, CA (PRWEB) June 29, 2005 -- A study released by the ITAA on June 21, 2005 reveals minority overrepresention in the IT field and an excessively high rate of IT unemployment, especially among females. (Read More)
The study titled “Untapped Talent: Diversity, Competition, and America’s High Tech Future” reports that, while minorities make up only 17.2% of the U.S. workforce, 33% of all undergraduate degrees in computer science, engineering, and related technologies were conferred on minorities. Minorities comprise 22.3% of U.S. IT workers – 30% higher than for all U.S. occupations.
The study reveals a grim job market for U.S. IT workers. The total number of IT jobs in the U.S. has diminished 8% - from 4,882,000 in 2000 down to 4,469,000 in 2004. Over 100,000 new graduates entered the IT workforce each year during that period, and a few hundred thousand more entered on nonimmigrant visas, such as H-1B and L-1.
Women comprise 32.4% of the IT workforce, or 1,448,000 workers. Of these skilled female IT workers, 92,000, or 6.4%, are unemployed. Combined with the 124,000 unemployed skilled male IT workers, U.S. employers are failing to utilize nearly 250,000 skilled U.S. IT workers. Rather than propose solutions to the high unemployment current workers, ITAA calls for substantial increases in the number of women and minorities entering the profession.
Call for New Visa to Bring Employers Rather Than Workers
“U.S. employers are simply not creating enough jobs for skilled IT workers, causing upwards of 15% of IT professional to be displaced from the profession in the past four years,” states Kim Berry, president of the Programmers Guild. “Therefore our organization urges Congress to create a visa category to attract the ‘best and brightest’ foreign employers to the U.S. – on the condition that they exclusively hire unemployed U.S. workers for their IT slots.”
This shortage of qualified employers is dissuading new college graduates. The ITAA study reports that “the popularity of computer science as a major among incoming freshmen dropped 59% from 2000 to 2004.”
One factor in the under-representation of women in the IT workforce is that a disproportionate number of H-1B workers are male. According to USCIS data for 2002, women comprised only 24% of temporary work visa admissions and only 15% of intercompany transfer admissions.
ITAA Supports a Visa Program That Undermines the Careers of Women and Minorities
The Programmers Guild notes the hypocrisy of ITAA’s report: In spite of 250,000 unemployed skilled U.S. workers and a consistent decline in the total number of U.S. IT jobs over the past four years, ITAA continues to advocate for flooding in 65,000 foreign workers per year under the H-1B program, which allows employers to hire foreign workers with no requirement to hire qualified Americans when available. Hundreds of foreign body shops legally hire exclusively foreigners of their own nationality under this visa, at salaries in the $40,000 range.
Often employers force U.S. workers to train their H-1B replacements, under threat of termination for cause and loss of benefits – driving women and underrepresented minorities out of the profession. The ITAA report bolsters the Guild’s concern that the H-1B visa program is being used by our economic adversaries as a means of gaining tech skills in the U.S., and then returning to their home countries like India and China to lead major technology companies.
While ITAA calls upon employers to embrace diversity, the Programmers Guild calls upon U.S. employers to utilize all skilled U.S. IT workers, regardless of race or gender, and to stop abusing the H-1B visa as a means of flooding the job market, driving down wages, and driving U.S. technology leadership out of the country.
About Us
The Programmers Guild advocates for the interests of U.S. computer programmers and other tech workers. The Guild is seeking sponsors for a bill that would amend the H-1B legislation to require that employers first attempt to recruit from the 250,000 unemployed skilled tech workers in the U.S. before DOL would approve the positions for H-1B workers. See www.programmersguild.org for more information.
References
- ITAA June 22, 2005 Press Release - Minorities - Fully Study Available Here http://www.itaa.org/eweb/Dynamicpage.aspx?webcode=PRTemplate&wps_key=0bf6f8eb-20ab-4906-957d-2ffa85ea205b
- ITAA Oct 4, 2004 Press Release – H-1B http://www.itaa.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?WebCode=PRTemplate&wps_key=123341A1-1B54-4C53-956F-7D7FC6DE7F1E
- USCIS Nonimmigrant Visa Stats for 2002. See columns J (H visa) and Q (L visa) http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/statistics/yearbook/2002/Table32.xls- USCIS H-1B By Country and Occupation for 2002 http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/aboutus/statistics/TEMP02yrbk/TEMPExcel/Table33.xls
- USCIS Nonimmigrant Visa Stats for 2004 (used 2002 since didn’t find separate “occupation” breakdown in 2004)
http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/statistics/yearbook/YrBk04TA.htm
Table 30: See columns J (H visa) and Q (L visa) for gender breakdown
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