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US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

theregister.com

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Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#51

Post by biggermike »

nodamage wrote: post #10
ycombonator wrote: post #3

Basically the administration turned the tables on Big Tech. They primarily import H1Bs to dilute the employment pool to let the market take care of wage depression. There is plenty of tech talent pipeline inside the country. Just look at the eager undergrads looking for employment and other US citizens looking to step into tech field via boot camps. Increasing the threshold for the wages to paid for “specialty occupa…

> Basically the administration turned the tables on Big Tech. They primarily import H1Bs to dilute the employment pool to let the market take care of wage depression. Not really, Big Tech pays H1Bs competitive salaries ( https://insights.dice.com/2020/05/19/google-apple-amazon-oth... ). What this mostly affects is IT consulting firms like Tata and Infosys.

> Not really, Big Tech pays H1Bs competitive salaries

That doesn't challenge the argument. Wages are set by supply and demand, expand the supply and wages fall. It doesn't matter if H1B wages are similar to a U.S. residents; wages as a whole are depressed.

As a personal example, the entry level of my field is almost completely composed of freshly graduated H1B Visa holders. The market rate is dictated by whatever their wages are, which actually isn't too far below the $200K headline number.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#52

Post by angry_octet »

This is actually a fantastic experiment to evaluate whether people are employed on H1-Bs because of a shortage which can't be met locally, or because indentured workers are cheaper. Ideally there would be another cohort, allocated randomly, where the employee is not tied to any one employer, like a temporary green card.

It is fallacious to say that with decreased supply, demand will dictate wages will go up. It is quite possible that demand is elastic at a particular price point, but at higher prices demand falls to zero (aka set up an office in Canada). There is no reason to assume linearity in any of this.

What's missing is that, even with the potential for high wages after graduation, it is still a big risk for an individual to borrow for a college education. These employers should be taxed, perhaps 10% of their H1-B expenditure, with that tax subsidising education in that field.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#53

Post by _aleph2c_ »

I was planning on going down to the states (I'm living in BC Canada), the salaries down there are more than 2x what you can get here. It doesn't look like I'll be able to do that now. With this said, this move by your current administration makes a lot of sense to me, there is an opportunity to grow the American middle class around knowledge work. The United States has the best training institutions and capital structures in the world. They have a healthy demographic profile (they are maintaining their population), there is no reason for them to spoil their own job market with injections of foreign labour. I see no reason for them not to train and hire their own citizens.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#54

Post by curryst »

dmode wrote: post #14

This is such a terrible idea. Ensures only people on H1 are techies in FAANG in the Bay Area. Forget about doctors and nurses in rural areas

> Forget about doctors and nurses in rural areas

Actually, you need to invert that. Doctors, at least, make more in rural areas than they do in urban areas. The estimations vary, but they're in the 5-30% more than their urban counterparts range.

The average wage for internal medicine doctors in urban areas (as an aggregate) is still above $208,000. It's actually roughly right, imo, to prevent depressing doctors' wages. It's right around the average, so you're paying above average rates to get an H1B, which is the intended purpose of the program isn't it? The idea being that it drives up salaries for those jobs, encouraging more people to train to do them.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#58

Post by jjeaff »

_aleph2c_ wrote: post #53

I was planning on going down to the states (I'm living in BC Canada), the salaries down there are more than 2x what you can get here. It doesn't look like I'll be able to do that now. With this said, this move by your current administration makes a lot of sense to me, there is an opportunity to grow the American middle class around knowledge work. The United States has the best training institutions and capital struc…

I see some reasons.

One is that foreign labor allows lower wages which can make american companies more competitive over foreign ones.

Second, allowing foreign workers encourages jobs to stay here in the US where at least the wages will be taxed and a large portion of those salaries will be spent here in the U.S., thus further stimulating the economy. Alternatively,if those same jobs move overseas, we see none of the tax revenue and none of it being spent here.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#59

Post by runawaybottle »

jjeaff wrote: post #58
_aleph2c_ wrote: post #53

I was planning on going down to the states (I'm living in BC Canada), the salaries down there are more than 2x what you can get here. It doesn't look like I'll be able to do that now. With this said, this move by your current administration makes a lot of sense to me, there is an opportunity to grow the American middle class around knowledge work. The United States has the best training institutions and capital struc…

I see some reasons. One is that foreign labor allows lower wages which can make american companies more competitive over foreign ones. Second, allowing foreign workers encourages jobs to stay here in the US where at least the wages will be taxed and a large portion of those salaries will be spent here in the U.S., thus further stimulating the economy. Alternatively,if those same jobs move overseas, we see none of the…

Let’s see.

We did the first experiment. I want to do this one too. We can’t just do one experiment and warn of other experiments.

If we get a bigger home grown tech sector, then experiment two wins.

Let’s get those Java oracle enterprise bootcamps going, I think we have enough need right here in America to fill those jobs. Plenty of Classic Lit majors ready to switch up.

Oh, and for who pays the most taxes and contributes the most to the American economy, I just googled it, it turns out it’s Americans. So ya, let’s get them into these jobs.

We can import the finest Java people to teach the bootcamps if necessary.

Re: US govt ups minimum H-1B tech salaries to $208,000 a year

#60

Post by lern_too_spel »

biggermike wrote: post #51
nodamage wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically the administration turned the tables on Big Tech. They primarily import H1Bs to dilute the employment pool to let the market take care of wage depression. Not really, Big Tech pays H1Bs competitive salaries ( https://insights.dice.com/2020/05/19/google-apple-amazon-oth... ). What this mostly affects is IT consulting firms like Tata and Infosys.

> Not really, Big Tech pays H1Bs competitive salaries That doesn't challenge the argument. Wages are set by supply and demand, expand the supply and wages fall. It doesn't matter if H1B wages are similar to a U.S. residents; wages as a whole are depressed. As a personal example, the entry level of my field is almost completely composed of freshly graduated H1B Visa holders. The market rate is dictated by whatever the…

If anything, this change will reduce big tech wages because they don't have to compete against the bodyshops in the H1B lottery. The people the bodyshops were bringing in weren't going to get hired by the big tech companies anyway.

On the other hand, the H1Bs working at big tech with higher salaries are more likely to later start another company, which will increase demand for top tier engineers, but this effect will take longer to materialize.

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