Wall Street Journal (Editorial)
April 26, 2015
Jeff
Sessions’s media spear-carriers say we misrepresented the Senator in
our April 25 editorial taking on his claims that Americans with college
degrees in science and
tech can’t find jobs in their fields. Their complaint doesn’t help his
case.
One
of the Alabama Republican’s favorite talking points is that 74% of
Americans with science, technology, engineering or math (STEM)
degrees—he says about 11 million
Americans—are working in non-STEM jobs. The Census data on which this
is based also say only 3.8 million Americans with degrees in these
subjects hold STEM jobs. He cites these figures to show that foreigners
are stealing American jobs and so the U.S. should
sharply reduce immigration even by skilled workers.
The
problem is that these numbers for STEM jobs are based on definitions
that are artificial and narrow. We cited a new study by the National
Foundation for American Policy
pointing out that, under this definition, people like Apple CEO Tim
Cook, or a Nobel Prize winner in science who works as a professor, would
not be counted as having a STEM job. And we cited National Science
Foundation data showing that 16.5 million people
report that their jobs require at least a bachelor’s degree-level of
STEM expertise.
The
Sessions camp is right that he never said there are six million
high-tech STEM jobs in the U.S., and we shouldn’t have put it that way.
But the data that Mr. Sessions
does cite define the STEM market even more narrowly, and thus
underscore our editorial argument. His claim that foreigners are
stealing jobs from well-educated Americans depends on a definition of
STEM jobs that distorts the actual STEM job market.
The
STEM job details can be eye-glazing, but the facts support what basic
economics teaches: Skilled immigrants enhance American prosperity, and
the labor market isn’t
a zero-sum proposition.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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