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Offshore Outsourcing and Labor Importing Put the Squeeze on Jobs in the U.S. High-Tech Industry

WASHINGTON (24 March 2003) - The United States lost 560,000 jobs in the high-tech industry in 2001-02, according to a 19 March report by the American Electronics Association ( http://www.aeanet.org /PressRoom/idmk_2002_tech_employment_press.asp ). While IEEE-USA commends AeA for its Tech Employment Update, the unanswered question is where these jobs have gone.

"In addition to the downturn in the U.S. economy, we're worried about the eagerness of American businesses to move high-tech jobs overseas," IEEE-USA President-Elect John Steadman said. "Congress should take a close look at overseas outsourcing to see what can be done to create and keep high-value, high-tech jobs here in the U.S."

During roughly the same time period (FY '01 and '02) our nation lost more than half-a-million high-tech jobs, both blue collar and professional, 799,700 new or renewal H-1B visas were issued. And according to a 6 March article in Business Week, another 329,000 people were working in the U.S. on L-1 visas in 2001, many in the high-tech sector.

In "A Mainframe-Size Visa Loophole," Business Week noted that the L-1 visa is intended for "intra-company transfers by multinational corporations," but "many employers looking to slash costs have discovered that they can use [outsourcing] firms that hire L-1s to dump high-paid Americans in favor of cheaper workers from abroad." Read on at http://www.businessweek.com/careers/content/mar2003/ca2003036_6655.htm .

The unemployment rate for electrical and electronics engineers (EEs) has more than tripled since 2000, going from 1.3 percent to 4.2 percent last year. For computer scientists, the jobless rate jumped from two percent to five percent.

"We have thousands of unemployed engineers, computer scientists and recent college graduates who are having difficulty finding employment because many of the jobs are taken by cheaper, foreign labor," Steadman said. "With jobs disappearing and historically high levels of unemployment among high-tech professionals, IEEE-USA asks why we continue importing thousands of new workers through the H-1B and L-1 visa programs.

"We should put our own people to work before sending any more good jobs to other countries."

Moreover, IEEE-USA President Jim Leonard, in a 10 March letter, asked every member of Congress to limit the number of H-1B visas available for admission to the U.S., and ensure that more of the H-1B fee revenue is used to address the specialized instructional needs of unemployed engineers, scientists and other high-tech professionals. The money currently goes more to entry-level training for lower-skilled workers.

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Updated 4/4/2003