While it took me a day to run all of these statistics, reporters have NO EXCUSE to not report the facts on STEM employment. One cannot even easily find the statistics used in this article, reporters have every responsibility to obtain accurate facts and figures and most do not! Google is front loaded with pure fiction, statistical lies, pumped in by lobbyists their 50¢ an hour SEO hires.

As I went through the statistics I was really disgusted for they are much worse than I originally thought.

You're not alone and folks, anyone, if you are not familiar with the requirements to obtain a U.S. BS in Mechanical engineering, Chemical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, let us just tell you it's one big bitch!

These degrees are very hard to master, to obtain and one studies their ass off to get them. BS degrees are 120+ credit hours and some schools have no padding, no liberal arts, "easy A" courses to buffer with.

In other words, people work very hard, study hard, must be bright else they couldn't have graduated, spent hours, thousands of dollars obtaining their degrees to face global labor arbitrage and then age discrimination. One cannot labor arbitrage people who has this level of skill and expertise and expect anything but ....well....
what HP has become today, destroyed, a shell of the engineering company they used to be. Same with IBM if anyone is familiar with their very crappy work in a host of areas and of course....hmmmm, now about that Windows Phone, Surface, OS? Howz that going for ya labor arbitraging Microsoft? In other words, by displacing, churning, labor arbitraging U.S. technical workers, over the long term, these same companies are succumbing to the competition who do not practice such evil employee policies. Think S. Korea labor arbitrages their engineers? Not even close, it's S. Korean engineers preferred, every step of the way. This is way beyond their employee granted stock options being flat, plenty of other companies have none or are negative.

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References used for the statistics are mostly linked above. USCIS H-1B info is in separate reports to Congress, bi-annual, titled "Characteristics of H-1B Specialty Workers" for Fiscal years, the last being FY11. Here is FY 2011, which has the data in tables sprinkled through the report.

The Economic Populist is officially the media. We're a news source and often are cited by much larger organizations. Hopefully others will stop publishing spin and dig out these statistics, the same as I just did.

I've seen some ridiculous pieces that are beyond belief statistical spin, not only in the press, but those same lobbyist talking points come out of the mouths of Congressional representatives on their sites and on the House and Senate floor. Sad, which goes to show how the American scientific community is overall going downhill. Spin is presented as fact and the ethical code of "thou shalt not spin thy statistics" clearly isn't being followed. Downright immoral.

The reality is most STEM jobs require a BS only, although they usually want some sort of work experience, such as internships and co-ops as well as mastery. There are some jobs where a MS is listed on the job requirements, but it must be a U.S. MS, which is 30 credit hours past the 120 STEM credit hours at the better schools. Still, many employers consider those with BS degrees in those jobs due to excellence and previous experience.

Obviously Academia jobs often require a PhD, yet tenure track have disappeared and Post Docs are covered under the J-1 Visa as well as Academia has unlimited H-1B Visas, they are exempt. Teaching positions, including Academia, universities, are not included in these BLS occupational categories utilized for this article.

Many other countries MS is really a MSc, which can be 120 credit hours (the same as a U.S. BS degree) to only 90 credit hours. Additionally there is much less design and labs requirements in other nations. To make it more confusing some schools abroad are matching the U.S. BS and MS requirements while other schools in that nation do not.

There also are some advanced research jobs which require a PhD. Still, even BS degreed people work in research labs, but again, it's talent and experience dependent quite often.

That said, very obviously one doesn't necessarily need even a BS degree to innovate, as evidenced by our now labor arbitraging Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Google search was developed by two PhD students who did complete their MS but got their idea while thinking about PhD dissertations. I should also mention Sergey Brin was brought over to the U.S. as a child, which clearly isn't the same thing as coming over to the states as labor arbitrage cannon fodder in terms of opportunities to innovate.

Additionally, the United States has an unlimited Visa, the "O" Visa for true excellence, although those achievements had to be accomplished before entry into the U.S.

Honestly, this was so easy to examine this statistics, even though I look at economic and labor statistics daily, I really was shocked as I researched this article to see how obvious it was not only is there no worker shortage, STEM occupations are not even really growing by size!

A final note, most H-1Bs are BS degreed but unfortunately the USCIS does not require proof or U.S. equivalent degrees listed. Therefore those BS degrees could be a BSc which is more like trade school in many countries, or at best community college here and I already discussed the issues with a "MS" as above. A PhD is usually a PhD, it's the terminal degree and it's merit is more the school, the adviser and most importantly the quality of the publications and research performed by the person holding the Doctorate.

So, to present this material to lawmakers one needs to write them, visit their offices and prepare your own documentation. I can tell you what corporate lobbyists do (beyond give millions in campaign donations and high paying jobs to friends and family members).

Corporate lobbyists put together media packages, which #1 consist of a 1 page flier with "talking points" they want to be "known". Now those talking points are very often fiction, spun with some biased paper or research by some propped up person posing as a research "group" or think tank and so on. That said, they always give 1 page flier talking points to Congressional staff with their other 1 page agenda. Then, they "repeat the lie" over and over until the "lie becomes truth". Lobbyists also actually write legislation they want "introduced" by a Congressional representative (and you thought Congress wrote their own bills, ha ha).

What regular people need to do is "repeat the truth until it becomes truth again" for corporate lobbyists have been spoon feeding politicians pure bunk (along with their money) for over 30 years in order to labor arbitrage U.S. STEM.

The other thing lobbyists do is divide and conquer. While this is clearly a labor issue they use the phrase "racist xenophobe" to divide people and confuse the issues in order to get their agenda through. In other words, if you want your career secured, well, then, you must be a card carrying KKK member. This technique divides various political fractions who normally would join forces on labor issues.

So, even as an individual, you need to make an appointment, put together a 1 page flier of talking points, then print out your back up research papers and there are many, from the GAO to Urban Institute to many other groups which are statistically valid and walk in and let it be known. Then the only thing that really can move Congress past corporate lobbyists and agendas is to shut down Congress by protests. That's voice, phone, sit ins, fax and general raising of hell (legally). It seems one can have the entire country in outright revolt but all Congress as well as this administration listens to are lobbyists, their campaign donors and uber-rich class.

I'd say again it does seem the most active union is the AFL-CIO DPE and maybe one can start a STEM, not workplace affiliated branch. One thing is very obvious, U.S. STEM really needs some labor representation, power to organize and thus protect U.S. STEM career (labor) interests.

This is true, I ignored the L-1 Visa simply because obtaining valid statistics wasn't found, the same with TN-1 Visas. There are many foreign guest worker Visas being abused, use to labor arbitrage Americans, worker substitution, which are ignored for this article, including H-2B Visas.

L-1 Visas are "inter company transfer" Visas. A foreign parent company uses these Visas to send employees to a FCDC and employers, in particular Indian "body shops", abuse these extensively, you are correct. EPI just wrote an open letter on the abuses of L-1.

TN Visas are unlimited "professional" Visas from Mexico and Canada under NAFTA and are also heavily abused.

Another known highly conservative estimate in this article is the number of H-1B Visa holders working and in the country. That estimate is low simply because it was the lower bound of what could be statistically verified. The real number is probably double that amount.

The reason the estimates are low and many Visas are ignored is to ensure the statistics of this article are valid, cannot be argued with. Lobbyists spend millions trying to repress information that is contained in this post, as do other "special interest groups", the least of which is immigration attorneys who make a huge profit off of importing foreign workers.

As we've said, many, many times, Shadowstats does not publish their methodology, therefore we cannot validate those figures. Upon occasion we calculate out our own real unemployment rate from BLS data but we can never come up with the high figures Shadowstats does. It doesn't mean Shadowstats is invalid, but we cannot determine how those figures are derived, therefore we do not use them, for we only publish statistics we can validate.

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The NumbersUSA post is referring to this CIS study, Who Got Jobs During the Obama Presidency?.

I've read their study there is a huge problem. The BLS only counts those not born in the United States against those born within the borders of the U.S. Therefore, foreign born means children brought over by their parents at a very young age, it means naturalized citizens born outside of the United States, permanent residents (green cards) and the foreign born also includes foreign guest workers and illegal workers.

So, the CIS study classifies the foreign born as immigrants. This really isn't quite valid. I wouldn't call someone who was simply born outside of the United States an immigrant, especially if they are naturalized citizens or brought over as very young children. There is a huge difference between this group and say a L-1 Visa worker.

The problem is we need accurate labor statistics by immigration status, bottom line. Our government sticks their head in the sand and won't even determine the numbers. That's just wrong and so often we hear some philosophy of one cannot ask a worker's immigration status because it might "offend" them or "cause them to run back into the shadows". This is ridiculous, it's the U.S. labor market, the U.S. labor statistics and we need accurate data on what is going on, which in turn can influence policy.

Fairly obvious politicians in D.C. do not want this information known for it if was tabulated, one can imagine how fast most of America would be outraged, consider our never ending job crisis. Bottom line, statistical agencies are simply supposed to obtain the statistics and not impose a view or philosophy on those statistics.

It is one thing to know the facts, another to craft policy as a result of those facts. Let us simply know the real statistics, please. Write your Congressional representatives demanding immigration status be asked by the Census for our labor/employment surveys.

Beyond this flaw of the CIS study, I've looked over their data and it appears to be straight out of the BLS statistics, which is more than valid to simply tabulate those figures.