Microsoft Uses Women's Soccer Team to Regurgitate Faulty Data

Subjects: shortage of Computer Science (CS) graduates, Women’s Soccer, H-1B train your replacement, shortage debunked, Computer Science degrees

We gained some traction on “train your replacement” H-1B abuse.  Many thanks to the journalists who covered the stories.

Foremost, a big thank you to ComputerWorld’s,  Patrick Thibodeau for his tireless work on covering the H-1B and foreign labor arbitrage topic. “About 500 IT jobs are cut at utility through layoffs and voluntary departures“, February 4, 2015. 

The New York Times, Pulitzer Prize winner, Julia Preston, who wrote, “Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements“, June 3, 2015, and was surprised enough about the comments on the article that she did a follow up article.

The Los Angeles Times, Pulitzer Prize winner,   Michael Hiltzik, who covered the Southern California Edison labor arbitrage in, “A loophole in immigration law is costing thousands of American jobs” February 20, 2015. (Sorry, no links, The LA Times is currently behind paywall — I guess I could delete their cookie.).

The Immigration shills waited a while and have now started regurgitating the faulty data based, immigration attorney funded, H-1B propaganda.   The use of women’s issues and the US National Soccer Team is a new angle though. The article is pretty well identified as propaganda and discussed on Slashdot.
 

Ten days ago, the United States women’s national soccer team became the most successful team in the history of the FIFA Women’s World Cup by winning the top prize for the third time. However, despite the fact that soccer is not as popular in America as in the rest of the world, it is not surprising that the U.S. women have been dominant in the sport in recent years. The explanation for that success lies in the talent pipeline. With over 1.5 million girls registered in youth leagues, close to 50 percent of all youth players in the U.S. are female and soccer is one of the top three most popular sports among girls ages 5-19.

We only get into the third paragraph before the author whips out the cherry picked graduation data and uses BLS projections rather than actual data.

Unfortunately, the strength in the talent pipeline that we see in female soccer today is not the reality for technology. The U.S. is facing a shortage of Computer Science (CS) graduates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, every year there are close to 140,000 jobs requiring a CS degree, but only 40,000 U.S. college graduates major in CS, which means that 100,000 positions go unfilled by domestic talent. Even more dramatic is that women in U.S. colleges and universities earn only 18 percent of CS degrees.“

First, Computer Science undergraduate degrees are not the only degrees that are applicable to Computer occupations.  Additionally, in 2011, the Census Bureau reports that, 1,013,300 (28%) of those employed in Computer occupations held less than a bachelor’s degree.

Source: NSF WebCaspar, 11 Computer and Information Sciences and Support Services.


The Bureau of Labor Statistics projections is also rather suspect at 140,000 per year, in fact, since 2009, employment growth in computer occupations is less than 10% of projected, at 13,922.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics: OES