USA

Working In The USA – Is The Country Losing The Tech Edge?

63% of H1B recipients for FY 2020 held Master’s degrees
For software companies, work experience is often considered a better teacher than universities
American labor markets also hit by new immigration policies

If you are thinking of working in the USA, get a Post Graduate degree. The new US immigration policy favors applicants with postgraduate degrees over others. While this may seem like a smart move, the tech industry often gives more weight to experience over degrees.

The mismatch may make it harder for companies in this industry to find the talent it needs to maintain its competitive edge over other countries. Read on to learn more.

Read: Can We Expect 9 Million Skilled Job Vacancies In The USA?

Working Man

Who we are today depends on the choices we made yesterday. With US President Trump choosing to prioritize immigrants with degrees over those with work experience, tech talent in the USA may become harder to find. Why? Because a lot of technical knowledge isn’t learned in schools but only through actual work experience.

Working In The USA – Where Do Software Engineers Learn To Code?

According to a survey conducted by Hired, amongst 700 software engineers, only 46% of software engineers have a degree in computer science. While tech companies do consider such degrees and a background in computer science to be valuable, technical talent hoed while working is often given a higher weight.

In many cases, tech companies look for skill sets that aren’t tied to any particular degree. Of all the software engineers who participated in the survey, 21% claimed to be self-taught and had no degree to back their talent. See the snapshot below:

Background	Computer Science Degrees	Other Relevant Degrees	Self-taught	Bootcamp participants
Percentage	46	20	21	13

Working In The USA – Immigration And Degrees

In the past year, the US administration has made a number of changes to the country’s immigration policy to prioritize immigrants with postgraduate degrees.

This includes reversing the order in which the H1B lottery is conducted for immigrants with graduate and master’s degrees. This change in order could increase the chances for an immigrant with a postgraduate degree to get an H1B visa.

According to data from the USCIS, around 52% of the all H1B applicants for the coming year have a master’s degree from a university in the USA. This is double the number of applicants with a master’s degree in 2015.

Financial Year	Applicants With BA Degree	Applicants With PG Degree
2015	132,063	40,518
2016	181,972	51,000
2017	166,000	70,000
2018	112,000	87,000
2019	94,000	96,000
202	96,011	105,000

Percentage Of Petitions And Selections With A Master’s Degrees For The H-1B Visa

There is also a marked change in the type of immigrants being awarded the H1B visa. In the lottery held for the H1B visas in the financial year 2020, 63% of recipients held master’s degrees. In the previous year, this percentage was only 56%.

Financial Year	Petitions	Selections
2019	50%	56%
2020	52%	63%

Working In The USA – Why Are Degrees So Important?

The idea behind these changes was to ensure that American jobs aren’t awarded to immigrants who are willing to take up the positions for lesser pay than American citizens. It is however interesting to note that this is something already prohibited by the H1B rules.

A study recently conducted by information site, Glassdoor confirmed that there is not much of a difference in salaries paid to US citizens and H1B visa holders. In some cases, H1B visa holders are being paid higher salaries based on their age and occupation.

Working In The USA The Effect Of New Immigration Policy

The change in immigration policies has resulted in favoring some industries over others. Small companies in the tech industry, in particular, have begun to find it difficult to fill open positions. It is interesting to note that tech companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook received 99% of all H1B visas in the previous year.

Thus, large companies who can afford to offer high pay packages are not majorly hit by the changes. Along with the tech industry, the American labor market is also facing a crunch in terms of H1B workers. This has resulted in lower wages and fewer jobs for immigrants and US citizens alike.