According to a just-releaed report called "Cyberstates 2007," issued by the AeA (American Electronics Association):
Virginia surpassed Colorado to lead the nation with the highest concentration of tech industry workers as a percent of the private sector workforce (8.9 percent). Until now, Colorado had owned this distinction ever since AeA began publishing the Cyberstates report.
In addition, the report finds that Virginia's total high-tech employment in 2005 was 261,000, behind only California (919,300), Texas (445,800), New York (299,900), and Florida (276,400). Virginia had the nation's second-highest growth rate in terms of high-tech employment in 2005. Overall, Virginia had a concentration of "89 high-tech workers per 1,000 private sector workers" in 2005, #1 in the nation.
According to the Washington Examiner, "Virginia technology workers receive an average annual wage of $83,600, which is 99 percent higher than the state's average private sector wage." Much of this employment is clustered in Northern Virginia, in a phenomenon that AeA Chief Executive Officer Bill Archey calls "geeks like to be with geeks." So THAT'S what we're all doing living in Northern Virginia? I KNEW there had to be a reason. :)
P.S. For the record, I'm liberal arts all the way, barely have a tech bone in my body. Thank goodness for the tech geeks, that's all I have to say!
You're welcome.
However, I'd argue that it's not so much that geeks like to be with geeks, but geeks like to be employeed.
Although many of those jobs are safe because they are tied to the feds and they aren't going anywhere :-p
AeA among others is astroturfing for an increase in non-immigrant guest worker visas. That's right, the wealthiest Americans in the world want their own private supply of guest workers.
Let's cut to the meat of the press release : "While we are encouraged by the pickup in tech employment, we are committed to the long term health of the industry, the economy, and our nation," continued Archey. "We have some serious challenges ahead. Companies of all sizes continue to have problems recruiting highly qualified and educated individuals to work for them, whether those individuals are foreign or domestic.
AeA has a caveat in their press release "we have always used a conservative definition of the high-tech industry," said William T. Archey, President and CEO of AeA". After a long post dot com slump, he's also bragging that the industry added 87000 jobs in 2005. With an H1B cap recently as high as 160,000 and massive expansion of L1 and TN visas, the bottom line is that Americans were losing high tech jobs.
A recent uptick is no reason to provide massive subsidies to IBM , Microsoft, Wipro and Tata systems.
Their articles usually follow this format:
steps...
1) "Dear God - the economy is great for high tech workers!!!"
2) "Well, we must need more offshoring and we need to import more foreign workers".
Read further down. It is an article to raise the H-1b cap. Their "research" is motivated by industry demands - not our national needs.
I have fought for protections for foreign tech workers - so that they aren't paid on average $16,000 less than Americans in the same IT job. I have fought to raise standards so that medical doctors aren't being displaced by entry level computer programmers. The AeA thinks any steps to curb abuse of the system is too much of a burden on industry. Their "solution" is to simply raise the cap on the H-1b.
Meanwhile, we do have a drop in computer science and engineering enrollments. Software occupations actually LOST 30,000 jobs last year. When adjusted for inflation, wages in the software occupations are DOWN. 7 of the top 10 applicants for H-1b visas are Indian offshore outsourcing companies.
The H-1b is, in current form, a tool to offshore American jobs. It is not about bringing in the best and brightest as the entire system is first come first serve. Salary, education, and experience are not considered when choosing who gets selected - in fact we are currently having a random selection of who get's selected because the industry flooded the system with applications this year.
A bipartisan bill to curb the abuse has been introduced by Senators Durbin and Grassley. I hope Senator Webb will co-sponsor it. In the house, Congressman Pascrell is about to introduce another bill to curb abuses.
Essentially, they establish real prevailing wages, audit companies to insure they are following the rules, and prevent "body shops" or head hunters from using the system - in a move to prevent offshoring.
Once we have fixed the system and seen it in action (to see how well the changes worked) then we can start talking about adjusting the cap. But until then, we should fix the program. Make it about the best and brightest - not the cheapest and most exploitable.
It is not a good time to be a software engineer. We may make high wages, but we also face long periods of unemployment. We compete directly with programmers from all over the world. I'm ok with competition as long as the rules are followed and the system is fair.