<p>The study apparently also notes that not all U.S. STEM graduates are able to find jobs in their fields.</p>
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<p>The above is a simple fact. The ‘shortage’ is only of cheap, young workers.</p>
<p>Here is the actual study:
[Guestworkers</a> in the high-skill U.S. labor market: An analysis of supply, employment, and wage trends | Economic Policy Institute](<a href=“http://www.epi.org/publication/bp359-guestworkers-high-skill-labor-market-analysis/]Guestworkers”>Guestworkers in the high-skill U.S. labor market: An analysis of supply, employment, and wage trends | Economic Policy Institute)</p>
<p>However, it is sloppy in writing about “STEM majors” (including biology and social science majors) while also referring to the “IT industry” and “IT jobs” (some of which are less technical jobs mainly taken by those with business type degrees, or are entry level help desk jobs not requiring a degree).</p>
<p>To what extent has outsourcing impacted/decreased the demand for STEM workers in the US, particularly in the IT/engineering/technology industry?</p>
<p>Offshore outsourcing (exporting jobs) is of much greater concern in terms of local employment rates than a few H1-B visas. As long as capital is more mobile than labor, lowering immigration will tempt employers to export jobs over importing workers.</p>
<p>Offshore outsourcing was a huge business fad in the early 2000s, just as the tech bubble crashed, making the unemployment problem in the industry even worse. It was a fad because everyone seemed to be rushing to outsource offshore, even when it made little sense. Some companies have since brought the operations back when they found that going to the cheapest offshore outsourcing contractor resulting in getting less than they paid for.</p>
<p>As far as “STEM majors” go, need I point out again that it is not a monolithic category with respect to job and career prospects? Biology is the most popular STEM major, but has poor job and career prospects in the <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-4.html</a> .</p>
<p>The “Gang of Eight:”
Senator John McCain, Navy pilot, POW, career politician
Senator Lindsey Graham, lawyer, career politician
Senator Marco Rubio, lawyer, career politician
Senator Jeff Flake, studied Political Science, career politician
Senator Chuck Schumer, studied law, career politician
Senator Dick Durbin, lawyer, career politician
Senator Bob Menendez, lawyer, career politician
Senator Michael Bennet, lawyer, third generation career politician, worked for an investment company to build his personal fortune.</p>
<p>Yes, but the reason corporations want more STEM grads is so they can lower their wages. It’s called “competition”. (This is like the 6th or 7th study showing the same thing.)</p>
<p>I know in NY area, it seems the BS degreed engineers with no work experience, no acknowledgement given for internships/research etc. They are overqualified per the job postings for entry level jobs, a recent posting we saw specifically stated, associate prepared engineers only(basically technicians). Do not apply if BS degree. This was a civil service NYC posting looking for mechanical/civil engineers.</p>
<p>Having a basic degree (perhaps a low GPA from a not so strong school) is not likely to lead to creative achievement to help the company keep ahead in innovation.</p>
<p>STEM graduates who are also in the top 1% or 5% of raw intelligence are in much shorter supply, and more easily recruited from overseas.</p>
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<p>Exactly. I’m an electrical engineering manager, and I manage people with EE and CS degrees. I’m not going to consider someone with a degree in biology instead of EE/CS when I hire, since they won’t have the skills I’m looking for. </p>
<p>For engineering jobs which require (or prefer) graduate degrees, lots of the jobs go to visa holders from other countries. It is simply a numbers game - there aren’t that many Americans with graduate degrees in engineering. I think that is due in part to the good job prospects with a BS in engineering, so Americans don’t “need” to get a graduate engineering degree to have a good career, while foreigners who wish to be sponsored for a visa to live in the US can greatly increase their odds with an engineering graduate degree.</p>
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<p>Many of those H1-B visas are used to bring over foreign workers to learn the jobs of US workers… the company requires the US worker to train the foreign worker, then the foreign worker goes back to their home company and takes the job (and sometimes other jobs in the same department area) back with it. The US worker is then laid off. I spent 3 years from 2008-2011 in IT at a company using this method of offshoring jobs. They drained about 1,500 local jobs from our community in that time using that method.</p>
<p>My guess is that the industries begging for all of these H-1B employees just want to hire people with very specific skill sets who can START DOING XYZ IMMEDIATELY. Which does make a certain amount of business sense. Hiring locally where the pool may include people who need a bit more training in XYZ may not resolve the issues that the business is facing soon enough.</p>
<p>But when you think about how long it takes to get through the H-1B process, and the amount of money that has to be spent on the lawyers, those businesses might come out ahead by just snatching up some smart high school students and training them to do the jobs that they want to have done.</p>
<p>“Only half of the students graduating from college with a STEM degree are hired into a STEM job, the study said.”</p>
<p>"“Even in engineering,” the authors said, “U.S. colleges have historically produced about 50 percent more graduates than are hired into engineering jobs each year.”"</p>
<p>That answers the question about bio stem majors.</p>
<p>I’m seeing Ivy Engineering graduates having a hard time. This is anecdotal but I hadn’t seen this five or six years ago.</p>
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<p>But are Ivy League schools all that well recruited by engineering companies? Seems that small size (including of the engineering majors) and competition from investment banks and such may make them less attractive than big state universities. Now, if the investment banks are not recruiting as much as before…</p>
<p>I have stated this several times as posters seem to assume STEM degrees are going lead to immediate high paid jobs. My oldest went to a school that is way up there in rankings for STEM. Like #1 in some areas. And there were a lot of disappointments after hearing years of all that hype. There was a wall of shame where they tacked up their rejections and they included apps to a lot of retail jobs. Now, in all fairness, in a couple of years, the water rose to its level, and the stats show that those majors were pretty much all employed with some nice average earnings, but it was not an auto dropping of nectars into the open mouths, I can tell you.</p>
<p>What I have seen in the stats is that very few US students are getting graduate degrees in STEM subjects. Almost all foreign students. And if they are willing to work for about the same as the Americans with the UG degrees, I can see where there is some back log in jobs.</p>
<p>Friends of ours with two sons that graduated with engineering degrees saw them go to Saudi Arabia to make some money as they could not find what they had hoped here THey spent two years there, gained experience and are now gainfully employed here, but I do remember some awkwardness some years ago when neither could find jobs despite their supposedly lucrative majors. </p>
<p>The same with nursing. It’s not the auto slam dunk that some people think it is . If you are limited in where you want to work, you may not find a job. Some areas have gluts. My friend has two Ds and they drive nearly an hour and a half each way to their jobs. Due to student loans and other issues they are living with parents and though they have nursing degrees, they could not find anything locally. I think they will, in time, but it was a rude shock when they went job hunting and were still without a find after a few months. There are not that many health care centers in their area, and those there are hanging onto their jobs. They had to venture out farther.</p>
<p>ok, totally anecdotal:
My friend works at a big name U’s research lab. Recently they hired a foreigner researcher (Stem field, phd). The position did not require work experience, just published papers and such. Out of curiosity I asked how they applicant pool looked like. Basically there were outstanding foreigners or blah Americans. I asked how come there were no outstanding american kids. Friend said:
You kidding me? No outstanding american kid would apply for such a low paid job. They would go for something better.</p>
<p>US universities granted over 72,000 engineering bachelors degrees in 2009-10, and this number has trended upwards for the past decade. BLS projects ~53,000 average annual job openings for engineers for the 2010-20 decade.</p>
<p>[Bachelor’s</a> degrees conferred by degree-granting institutions, by field of study: Selected years, 1970-71 through 2009-10](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_286.asp]Bachelor’s”>Bachelor's degrees conferred by degree-granting institutions, by field of study: Selected years, 1970-71 through 2009-10)
[Employment</a> by occupation](<a href=“http://bls.gov/emp/ep_table_102.htm]Employment”>http://bls.gov/emp/ep_table_102.htm)</p>
<p>But if you look at a breakdown by discipline for those 72,000 engineering degrees compared to the disciplines where the most growth is expected in engineering, you will see a large discrepancy, a large percent of engineering degrees are in areas like mechanical (nearly 18,500 in 2009-10) and electrical (11,400) which are expected to have slower growth rates between 2010 and 2020, whereas biomed engineering is supposed to expand at a HUGE rate between 2010 and 2020 (60%) and had only 3775 degrees in 2009-2010…engineering students need to seriously rethink which discipline they are going into.</p>
<p>[Bachelor’s</a>, master’s, and doctor’s degrees conferred by degree-granting institutions, by sex of student and discipline division: 2009-10](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_290.asp]Bachelor’s”>Bachelor's, master's, and doctor's degrees conferred by degree-granting institutions, by sex of student and discipline division: 2009-10)</p>
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<p>However, the number of jobs for biomedical engineering bachelor’s degree holders may be even smaller. Indeed, it does not appear that they do as well in the job market as new graduates in most other engineering majors.</p>
<p>The differences between different engineering majors do matter (as well as the differences between engineering majors and biology majors that all seem to be lumped together as “STEM majors”). The recent real estate and construction downturn was much worse for civil engineering graduates than most other engineering graduates, for example. The tech bubble crash a decade ago was worst for computer science and engineering graduates (but the real estate bubble that was starting to inflate then was probably good for civil engineering graduates until that popped).</p>