" For whatever reason, some people just can't get enough skills to move up the food chain." The assumption that this is an skills problem is only true for the

" For whatever reason, some people just can't get enough skills to move up the food chain." The assumption that this is an skills problem is only true for the individual but not in the aggregate. Payment is not a function of skills, but of supply and demand. If everybody was able to work as a programmer, programmers would be pay as unskilled people and business could keep the profits. That's the reason of the insistence, in the States, in not enough STEM professionals and the need for immigration.