Building a Workforce for the Information Economy (2001) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-20
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 1... ...
The need for information technology workers depends on the demand for information technology throughout the economy, both in the United States and worldwide, and IT markets and talent can be found all over the world. Information technology is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, and with that trend has come a burgeoning demand for IT workers, both to enable the use of existing information technologies and to develop such technologies for the future.
|
From page 2... ...
Many employers assert the existence of an IT labor "shortage" and additionally argue that if they are unable to hire qualified foreign workers to fill open positions, they will be at a competitive disadvantage in a global IT industry. At the same time, some job seekers find it difficult to obtain jobs in information technology, despite having credentials that they think should qualify them for employment.
|
From page 3... ...
What are the current sources of workers, and how are these sources changing? What role do foreign workers play in the IT labor market?
|
From page 4... ...
Like other workers, IT workers care about their financial compensation, which can be a mix of salary, bonuses, and stock options and/or equity stakes. But for many, the opportunity to work on challenging projects with new and interesting technology is a great motivator, and many surveys report that employees commonly rank compensation lower on their priority lists than technical challenges and the opportunity to learn new technical skills.
|
From page 5... ...
Third, the committee feels that "tightness" is a broader and more encompassing term that does better justice to the complexity of the issue. Tightness in the overall labor market helps to account for the consistent employer reports of difficulty in hiring IT workers.
|
From page 6... ...
Other sources include those who study IT after they have completed their formal education (in a non-IT-related field) and foreign workers who have generally been educated in whole or in part abroad.
|
From page 7... ...
However, the data available to the committee do not allow the causality of differences to be determined. The data available are insufficient to establish either the presence or the absence of age discrimination, and did not allow the committee to determine whether these differences are the result of illegal age discrimination, legal conduct by employers that may be perceived as discriminatory, personal choices made by individual employees, or the ramifications of a rapidly changing industry.
|
From page 8... ...
From the perspective of employers, the critical feature of the H-1B program is that it enables them to hire qualified foreign workers in a matter of months, in contrast to the years required to attract and train additional U.S. students or to obtain green cards for prospective permanent residents.
|
From page 9... ...
The committee also believes that the use of foreign workers will continue to be necessary for the immediate future, and that foreign workers will continue to make important contributions as described above, but policy governing the use of foreign workers must consider not only the benefits of admitting foreign IT workers but also potential negative effects on the domestic workforce, and take steps to ameliorate those negative effects. ENGAGING THE EXISTING IT WORKFORCE To produce more without additional hiring, a firm may ask its workers to work overtime.
|
From page 10... ...
FORMAL EDUCATION Education and training increase the supply of qualified workers by attracting and preparing new entrants to the IT workforce, enabling individuals already working in IT to acquire skills qualifying them for higherskilled and better-paying jobs, and helping current highly skilled IT workers keep their skills up to date. Current high school mathematics education in the United States is inadequate to meeting the challenge of increasing the supply of IT workers.
|
From page 11... ...
The pace of technological change in IT increases the costs and benefits of training for both employers and workers. Employers gain by having an alternative to hiring new workers, and thus, appropriately structured training, involving the integration of work experience with "formal" learning, can help to relieve tightness in the IT labor
|
From page 12... ...
Workers must be willing to spend some of their own time on training efforts, and employers must be willing to explicitly support worker training. INTEGRATION OF WORK EXPERIENCE, TRAINING, AND EDUCATION The committee heard considerable testimony that employers prefer a combination of formal education and training with work experience that is relevant to the jobs for which applicants are being hired.
|
From page 13... ...
COPING WITH A TIGHT LABOR MARKET In the face of labor market tightness, firms in the near term must pursue some combination of the strategies available to employers in all sectors. These include recruiting newly available domestic or foreign workers, paying higher wages, making do with fewer workers than they would like, and retooling or making better use of the workers they have.
|
From page 14... ...
PRINCIPLES FOR ACTION The committee believes that there is no single solution to relieving the tightness in the IT labor market, and multiple approaches involving public and private stakeholders as well as individual workers will be necessary. Effective approaches to addressing tightness must be responsive on the time scale of significant change in information technology, and employers must be able to hire workers on a business time scale (i.e., weeks or months rather than years)
|
From page 15... ...
While human capital theory predicts that an employee who receives training may well move on to another job, thereby depriving the employer of the benefits of a more highly skilled employee, recent empirical research indicates that in some cases training both helps the employer and increases employee loyalty. Training existing employees may be a better option than recruitment.
|
From page 16... ...
They should: · Negotiate release time for training and professional development where possible; employer financial support for training, professional development, and additional formal education; and placement into jobs that will develop and enhance skills with current technologies. · Seek internships with potential employers when using formal education to learn new skills.
|
From page 17... ...
2. Ensuring that foreign workers are as free as domestic workers to change jobs, and streamlining the green-card process, i.e., the process through which a foreign worker can obtain permanent residency in the United States.
|
From page 18... ...
Furthermore, the government should consider the effect of having increased the numbers of H-1B visas without having significantly streamlined the labor certification process or reevaluating the numerical limits on permanent residents available in the current employment-based immigration program (i.e., the number of permanent visas available to foreign workers based on their job skills and country of origin)
|
From page 19... ...
EXECUTOR Sway 19 far Of c~" p~y ~r "~fe ~~r Of IT Of /" refer" ~r Oaf sea. Taken together' these recommendations' if followed' should increase boa Me numbers and We e~ecOveness of the IT ~orkforce and' in so doing' improve the co~edUveness of Me C.~ economy boa now and in Me future.
|
From page 20... ...
Prepublication—Subject to Further Editorial Correction chapI .doc 10/21/2000 2:1 1 PM IT Inert envision ~ Ot—~rl~7 Or ; ~~ ILL ·tl ~ 1 1 - -rat ~^ ~ ~~y llVW V1 lililUVa~LlUll U1~t Will come 10 change what we see as common applications of IT, making it hard to describe We technologies in enduring teens. Although prediction can be perilous, an obvious trend is the rise of networked information systems, which is fundamental to the 199Os and now 2000s explosion In uses of IT md the spread ofthose uses to more and more individuals, households, and different kinds of organizations.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.