Sixth graders (left to right) Carrine Jenkins, 11, Gabriella Martinez, 11, and Asia Henphill, 11, enjoyed programming and making the turtle move on screen during IGNITE's programming class at South Shore K-8 School. (Photo: Garrett Hubbard for USA TODAY)
America faces a talent crisis almost as big as our jobs crisis.More than 13% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 still are unemployed.Demand for employees with science and technology training exceeds availability in the labor market.Many would be surprised to learn that finding a job that pays six figures in America these days isn't as hard as you might think. But finding people qualified for those jobs is a considerably more difficult task.
In short, America faces a talent crisis almost as big as our jobs crisis.
Despite signs of at least some economic recovery, more than 13% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 are still unemployed. That number goes up to 16.2% if you include discouraged young people who have dropped out of the workforce. For young African- Americans, the unemployment rate stands at 22%.
How can this be with so many American companies, particularly in the high-tech sector, offering top dollar to attract qualified talent? Technology giant Microsoft reportedly cannot permanently fill more than 6,000 jobs, most of them paying in the $100,000 range. Other major American corporations, including Facebook, Oracle, GE and others are said to be facing similar challenges in their quests to fill high-skilled positions.
Simply put, demand for employees with science and technology training far outstrips availability in the American labor market. The need for qualified high-skilled workers is immediate and chronic.
American universities annually award approximately 40,000 bachelor's degrees in computer science, but an estimated 120,000 new computing jobs require such a degree every year. Meanwhile, the United States grants only 65,000 visas to high-skilled workers annually -- not nearly enough to make up for the talent gap in our science and technology-driven industries.
The fix? There are two issues that need to be addressed: the short-term need for more qualified workers and the long-term need for creating those new workers.
Long term, finding workers for high-skilled jobs requires increased focus on training in the science, math, engineering and technology fields. And it means encouraging an education culture in which those jobs are valued.
Today, a mere 5% of U.S. high schools offer Advanced Placement courses in computer science. Only nine states recognize computer science as a part of their core curriculum. Those meager offerings fail to provide adequate preparation for young people to pursue STEM fields in college. As a result, only 8% of college freshmen ultimately receive degrees in STEM fields. In 2008, only 4% of U.S. bachelor's degrees were awarded in engineering. For comparison, in China that number is 31%.
Shorter term, it is imperative for policy-makers in Washington to increase the number of visas the United States grants to highly skilled workers to come to America, or better yet, stay after they receive STEM training in our colleges and universities.
American universities today award nearly half of their graduate degrees in STEM fields to foreign nationals. Students from all over the world come to our country to receive the benefits of our strong higher education system. Yet, while American universities are graduating foreign nationals in those fields, we as a nation are not granting the number of visas necessary to place those graduates into vacant high-skilled American jobs.
It defies all logic to give visas to train foreign young people extensively in tech and engineering fields and then for the host country to not reap the economic benefit of that training.
The high-tech sector is one of America's golden geese, but if we don't find workers to fill jobs in that critical sector of our economy, we risk seeing that goose migrate offshore. If American companies cannot find the talent to fill jobs here, those companies will have no choice but to outsource abroad or hire in overseas offices. That means losing not only one high-skilled position, but also the several jobs supporting each high-skilled position and the tax revenues that go along with all of them.
In the case of Microsoft alone, placing workers in those 6,000 vacant jobs today would mean moving more than $600 million off the corporate balance sheet and into workforce salaries and compensation -- which would stimulate the local and national economies without spending one additional taxpayer dime.
There has been a lot of talk recently about comprehensive immigration reform. But that's a topic that continues to divide the nation and Washington, D.C., a city that is already slow to act. With such division, policy-makers would be much better served to focus on a targeted, bipartisan solution to our nation's talent crisis.
After all, keeping good-paying high tech jobs that now sit vacant from being shipped abroad by expanding the pool of workers who possess the skills necessary to fill those jobs here at home -- without spending one new dime of taxpayer money -- is something on which we should be able to all agree.
Jeffrey Mazzella is the president of the Center for Individual Freedom.
In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors.
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