H-1B visa use cuts U.S. programmer, software engineer wages by up to 6%

[Newsjock]

Source: Computerworld

The use of H-1B workers by U.S. companies is decreasing wages for computer programmers, system analysts and software engineers by as much as 6%, according to a study released this week by researchers at New York University's Stern School of Business and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

The researchers said they found evidence that the wages are falling by accessing tens of thousands of resumes provided by a "leading online job search site" they wouldn't identify, to gain demographic and wage data of individual companies. They took all that information and combined it with government and other public data sources, including H-1B visa use and outsourcing, to get what they termed a "micro-data" view of what is going on in public companies that hire visa holders and offshore work.

The report's authors said that they are not using the study to take a position on H-1B visa use and do not discount other research that has found that H-1B visa-holders are helping U.S. competitiveness.

"In this paper, we simply sought to dispel the myth that globalization generates no losers," wrote Prasanna Tambe, an assistant professor of information, operations and management sciences at the Stern School, and Lorin Hitt, a professor of operations and information management at Wharton. The authors said that it's important that policy-makers understand the wage impact of the H-1B visa program.


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