Help Wanted: 300,000 Jobs Unfilled

The Charleston Gazette
July 12, 2012

Here’s a puzzle: High-tech U.S. businesses say they have 300,000 job vacancies but can’t find science-savvy American workers to fill them. They asked Congress to raise the ceiling on H-1B visas for special-skills workers so that 200,000 well-educated aliens can arrive each year. (Some U.S. labor unions say this is a ploy to obtain foreign specialists who work for less.)

We assume that the unfilled vacancies are real — during a time when millions of Americans are looking for work — and they’re a sad reflection on America’s education system, which can’t produce enough intelligent young people with science training.

STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — is a buzzword for the type of education needed by modern societies to continue advancing. America’s lack is ominous.

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