Are you more worried about an IT worker shortage in the United States or an IT job shortage? It’s a tricky question. Unemployment among IT workers is about 3.7%. Not bad if you are an IT worker. Meanwhile, salaries are up about 6%, according to InformationWeek’s annual Salary Survey. Not bad. But for a company like Microsoft, an IT worker shortage is causing problems on the hiring front. During a panel discussion about U.S. innovation at a Microsoft Research Tech Fair today in Washington, D.C., Bill Gates said Microsoft is having trouble finding enough skilled people to fill jobs at multiple levels. “The jobs are there and they are high-paying jobs, but we are not seeing the pipeline [of talented job applicants] as it used to be. This creates a dilemma for us on how we get work done.”
Phillip Bond, undersecretary of technology for the Department of Commerce, noted that there's a sizable number of unemployed engineers in the United States. But Gates quickly countered: “Anyone who's got the education and the experience, they’re not out there unemployed.”
The problem with the available labor pool, Gates said, is threefold: eroding investment in the education system, a lack of interest by students in computer science, and a cap on H-1B visas that makes it hard for Microsoft to hire talented workers from other countries. In fact, growing opportunities in India and China have meant that fewer foreign students come to the United States to study, and many of those who do return home to work once they graduate.
Shirley Tilghman, president of Princeton University, argued that the bigger problem with the education system comes before college or graduate school. “The U.S. has the finest higher-education system in the world,” she said. “What’s failing is the K-12 system.” She added, “By the time they get to us [at the university level] they are math-phobic and science-phobic.”
So, what do you think? Should the cap on H-1B visas be lifted? Is the education system failing our children? Are Microsoft’s standards for hiring unusually high?
