Recession Over; Shortage of IT Workers

The new bill to boost H-1B visas is based on a lie | The Industry Standard - InfoWorld

When labor is truly short, salaries tend to spike. But that's not happening. I've spoken to many employers over the past two years as I've reported on the improving employment picture, and almost none has said that salaries are exploding as they did in the years leading up to the dot-com bust.
Indeed, salaries in computer- and math-related fields for workers with a college degree rose only 4.5 percent between 2000 and 2011, says Ross Eisenbrey, the vice president of the Economic Policy Institute. "If these skills are so valuable and in such short supply, salaries should at least keep pace with the tech companies' profits, which have exploded," he wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times.

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Sort of validates what I saw working at State Farm in Bloomington, IL. More BS when it comes to IT jobs. Illinois State University is about mile away, and 80% of State Farm's IT department of about 20,000 people is from India - either physically relocated or remotely connected. SF all but cancelled their Infotech venture with ISU (Infotech program sought to train people with non-IT BS degrees to do entry-level Java, mainframe, etc... and pay them lower wages than a CS major would expect) when they signed their deals with Accenture, Patni and Satyam. Outsourcers offered pennies on the dollar labor cost (even cheaper than retrained Sociology and History majors) and SF used Infotech as an example of how stupid, expensive and untrainable local college graduates were (relative to foreigners who were largely unemployable in their home countries, but were nonetheless "pre-trained" and "degreed in the field"). Consumer insurance rates didn't go down along with labor costs and no one really takes CS classes at ISU anymore with the desire to work for "The Good Neighbor" company. Ah well... progress. You can thank both parties for this upcoming bill. Truly a bipartisan venture to warm the heart in these austere times.

Same here. Billionaire mining magnates import labour from South East Asia instead of investing in training local workers. No doubt at a reduced pay also.