H-1B professional visas creating jobs in US: study

American businesses are finding it hard to fill skilled positions even as H-1B visas that bring in foreign professionals, including a large number from India, are creating jobs in the US, shows a new US study.

Confirming Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' contention that an arbitrary cap on H-1B visas is forcing them to outsource jobs, the study shows major US technology companies today average more than 470 job openings for skilled positions in the US while defence companies have more than 1,265 each.

A second complementary study by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) found after examining H-1B filings and year-by-year job totals for the technology companies in the Standard & Poor (S&P) 500 that hiring skilled foreign nationals on H-1B visas is associated with increases in employment at US technology companies.

The data collected by the Arlington, Virginia-based policy research group, on 'H-1B Visas and Job Creation' show that for every H-1B position requested with the Department of Labour, US technology companies increase their employment by five workers.

For technology firms with less than 5,000 employees, each H-1B position requested in labour condition applications was associated with an increase of employment of 7.5 workers.

This is particularly remarkable since the actual number of people hired on H-1B visas is likely to be much lower than the total number of applications filed with the Department of Labour, said NFAP, focussing on trade, immigration and related issues.

'Combined, these two studies show that US employers continue to need skilled labour, including individuals not born in the United States who, the empirical evidence indicates, are creating new opportunities for US workers,' said NFAP Executive Director Stuart Anderson.

'While every H-1B hired may not necessarily lead to five to seven Americans being hired, the data does strongly imply, at minimum, that new H-1B professionals are complementing other US hires, rather than displacing them, as critics allege.'

According to 'Talent Search: Job Openings and the Need For Skilled Labour in the US Economy', a number of companies have thousands of skilled positions open, with this level of openings persisting for a year or more.

This is part of a longer-term trend that threatens to harm America's economic future, with US companies lacking access to the skilled professionals needed to grow and innovate inside the US.

More than 140,000 job openings for skilled positions are available today in the 500 companies that make up the S&P 500. S&P 500 companies employ only about 14 percent of individuals working in the US, so the overall demand for skilled labour in the US economy is much greater.

The Department of Labour's JOLTS survey indicates that there are approximately four million job openings in the US every month at all skill levels.

The S&P 500 companies with the most job openings as of January 2008 are Microsoft (4,005), Northrup Grumman (3,925), Lockheed Martin (3,901), General Electric (3,078), Countrywide Financial (2,415), JPMorganChase (2,164), Tenet Healthcare (2,050), United Health Group (1,927), Raytheon (1,694), IBM (1,670), Computer Sciences Corp. (1,666), Cintas (1,664), L-3 Communications (1,618), Bank of America (1,600), US Bancorp (1,562) and Cisco Systems (1,504).

These are openings for jobs in the US requiring a BA, professional degree or higher. The NFAP study also found that even employers that reduced employment reduced it less if they had filed for H-1Bs visas.