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Wages or Shortage?
By
[Peter Suderman]
Dean Baker on tech employers who want to expand the number of H1B visas for high-skilled workers:
Dean Baker's a sharp guy, and he's not entirely out of touch here, but I think he vastly oversimplifies things. It's certainly true Microsoft could change education patterns and employment goals in the country if it dramatically boosted the salaries of certain positions. But it's not always that easy for employers to simply throw more money at salaries.
For example, I spoke to someone a few nights ago who owns and runs a successful coffee shop here in D.C. She said that one of the most difficult things about the business is retaining and managing staff. Finding employees who are reliable and qualified (whether those qualifications are as complicated as doctoral degrees or as simple as being able to work flexible hours) is tough in any business. Somehow I doubt this would be as much of a problem if she paid them all $50 or $100 an hour. That, however, is a plainly absurd idea.
Basically, though, that's what Baker's suggesting Microsoft do. While Microsoft obviously works on a vastly different financial scale, it still faces a similar difficulty: managing a finite amount of resources and trying to get the most return from them. Simply expecting the company to boost wages through the roof is unrealistic. But if those are the expectations, then advocates of keeping current restrictions are going to be disappointed when they see more and more companies following Microsoft's lead and opening up facilities like this.
Dean Baker on tech employers who want to expand the number of H1B visas for high-skilled workers:
The argument from high-tech employers, that they simply can't get enough high tech workers in the United States is ridiculous on its face. If these jobs paid millions of dollars per year (like jobs at Wall Street investment banks), then highly skilled workers would leave other occupations and develop the skills necessary to work in high tech occupations. Obviously, Bill Gates and the other high tech employers cited in this article want to be able to employ high tech workers at lower wages. The issue is wages, not a shortage.
Dean Baker's a sharp guy, and he's not entirely out of touch here, but I think he vastly oversimplifies things. It's certainly true Microsoft could change education patterns and employment goals in the country if it dramatically boosted the salaries of certain positions. But it's not always that easy for employers to simply throw more money at salaries.
For example, I spoke to someone a few nights ago who owns and runs a successful coffee shop here in D.C. She said that one of the most difficult things about the business is retaining and managing staff. Finding employees who are reliable and qualified (whether those qualifications are as complicated as doctoral degrees or as simple as being able to work flexible hours) is tough in any business. Somehow I doubt this would be as much of a problem if she paid them all $50 or $100 an hour. That, however, is a plainly absurd idea.
Basically, though, that's what Baker's suggesting Microsoft do. While Microsoft obviously works on a vastly different financial scale, it still faces a similar difficulty: managing a finite amount of resources and trying to get the most return from them. Simply expecting the company to boost wages through the roof is unrealistic. But if those are the expectations, then advocates of keeping current restrictions are going to be disappointed when they see more and more companies following Microsoft's lead and opening up facilities like this.
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