5 ms·

When you're trying to hire someone, "right now" is important. If I want to hire a nurse, and there are no nurses available, I can't afford to wait 4 years for s

When you're trying to hire someone, "right now" is important. If I want to hire a nurse, and there are no nurses available, I can't afford to wait 4 years for someone to train as a nurse to be available for me to hire. If I just keep offering to pay more, then yes, I will eventually be able to hire a nurse that was previously employed somewhere else, but now _that_ person needs to hire a nurse. No matter how many times you go around this circle, there are not enough nurses for everyone to hire. That is a shortage. A shortage doesn't typically come with the asterisk of "but if I wait long enough then maybe there won't be".

jojobas 6y ago
While that is true, ignoring the fact that H1B destroys the feedback between shortage and supply is just as bad. Possible solutions are: -Require the hirer to contribute to scholarship funding in the area of work - Limit H1B to 75th percentile in salary terms.
- nrmitchi 6y ago
  > - Limit H1B to 75th percentile in salary terms. Do you mean, cap the amount of money a company is allowed to pay someone on an H1B? The entire change of rules here is because companies were not paying market rate. Requiring them to not pay market rate defeats the purpose here entirely. If you mean require that companies pay _at least_ the 75th percentile, then yes, I believe that is what the action that this entire thread is about is going. I would also disagree that H1B destroys the feedback loop of jobs being needed. I don't believe the number of H1Bs issued is any where near large enough to disrupt an entire industry.
  - jojobas 6y ago
    The latter, only allow H1B for highly paid people. I can't find anything specific about the new requirements.
- TuringNYC 6y ago
  We already have a system for that -- taxes. Why would you underpay H1B workers? It seems punitive w/o cause. 1. It is unfair to the workers 2. The H1B Programme is for top talent, for talent you cannot find locally. If anything you should overpay for such valuable talent. 3. High H1B salaries also come back to the country in the form of taxes just like for all workers, which should improve schools. Schooling is a shared problem for communities and our country, and should be paid for with taxes -- why would you put the burden of that on immigrant workers? Finally, if despite taxes, we cannot fix our school system, perhaps instead of blaming/punishing immigrants we should be looking at our municipal and state governments.
  - Dork1234 6y ago
    K-12 schooling in America is paid through property taxes, so unless they are living in a area with high property taxes you most likely wont be helping much. College level school funding (state/federal) has basically dried up in the past few decades with budget cuts. The idea is affordable public college education is not realistic for most people. I believe this is what the commenter is talking about needing more funding.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > K-12 schooling in America is paid through property taxes. That’s probably not true exclusively anywhere in America, and it's not true predominantly in a number of parts of America. For instance, in California less than 1/4 comes of K-12 funding comes from local property taxes, and the absolute majority comes from State funds which are derived primarily from state income taxes.
    - barry-cotter 6y ago
      > The combination of state, local, and federal school funding makes it so that the districts attended by poor students are funded 2.5% more than non-poor students. And even within districts, “schools with less advantaged students spend at least as much (and often significantly more).” ... > Property based funding of schools is not likely to be a very effective target for school reform since our current system does not actually have large differences in the funding of poor students. I think that it is more likely that the dysfunction in the schools is best explained by a lack of continuity and efficiency within the schools that serve poor students. The property tax debate is mostly just an easy but misguided target for explaining the achievement gap. On top of the pure fact that property based taxes have actually still allowed for the progressive funding of schools, we already have examples of states that fund students without a total reliance on local property taxes. Take Michigan. Michigan has a centralized funding source for their students. The state takes an overall tax and then breaks it up evenly across students within the state (there are extra complexities to this that are addressed in this article). Even with these changes in school funding, it does not appear that the reformed funding strategy had any impact on student outcomes. In general, funding is not a good proxy for educational quality. https://medium.com/@coreykeyser/why-conventional-wisdom-on-education-reform-is-wrong-a-primer-f6c0361a48d1 https://medium.com/@coreykeyser/why-conventional-wisdom-on-e...
edoceo 6y ago
Seems like you assume a finite number of nurses. If the pay keeps going up, then new candidate will appear, not immediately but, pretty soon. Market forces and all that.
- nrmitchi 6y ago
  > I can't afford to wait 4 years for someone to train as a nurse to be available for me to hire From my comment. Nurses require training. I did not assume a finite number of nurses. If I am sick and need a nurse, I need one _right now_. There not being enough of them is a shortage. It may not be a shortage in the future, but right now, it is.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    What profession doesn't require training or experience to do well? I wouldn't hire someone who had never built a house before even if I wanted one built right now.
    - nrmitchi 6y ago
      You're right, you would look outside of your country's talent pool to try to find someone qualified to do it for you. Or are you suggesting that you would wait around and be homeless for 4 years until someone local built up enough training and experience in order to build your house? If you're going to suggest that you would wait and "live somewhere else", I would point out that people who are trying to hire, for example, nurses, often don't have that luxury. If they wait 4 years, they'll be dead. No one is suggesting that high skill work status are used for people with no training or experience; they explicitly require training and/or experience in order to qualify. If think you're proving my point; if you need to hire someone right now, and there is no one available locally to do it right now, then there is a shortage, and you need to look outside of your local market.
      - Lammy 6y ago
        Is my "local market" the entire rest of the United States? Or just my state/county/city? This still doesn't seem like you're describing a real problem.
zo1 6y ago
The higher price makes the economics around that job different. It makes it valuable to utilize the existing individuals' time better, it makes employers give them secondary resources to help them perform their job better/faster, and it will punish employers that don't use their highly-paid time properly and to full efficiency. Also, the requirements for said position would be under pressure to be reduced to increase the available labor pool that can perform that job. Not to mention that it'll act as a price-signal for more people to train in that field. It's not a binary "oh no not enough people" type of deal. It's a sliding scale and the closer you get to each side, the higher the incentives are to revert to some sort of equilibrium. It really is quite one-sided (and potentially suspicious) to just try figure out "how can we get more of these people from other countries" instead of looking at all the other locally-available solutions. The same "circle" you speak of will happen regardless, even with plenty of immigration, with the double-whammy being that it'll affect the poorer countries that can't afford to keep those skilled immigrants.

jojobas 6y ago

While that is true, ignoring the fact that H1B destroys the feedback between shortage and supply is just as bad. Possible solutions are: -Require the hirer to contribute to scholarship funding in the area of work - Limit H1B to 75th percentile in salary terms.

nrmitchi 6y ago
> - Limit H1B to 75th percentile in salary terms. Do you mean, cap the amount of money a company is allowed to pay someone on an H1B? The entire change of rules here is because companies were not paying market rate. Requiring them to not pay market rate defeats the purpose here entirely. If you mean require that companies pay _at least_ the 75th percentile, then yes, I believe that is what the action that this entire thread is about is going. I would also disagree that H1B destroys the feedback loop of jobs being needed. I don't believe the number of H1Bs issued is any where near large enough to disrupt an entire industry.
- jojobas 6y ago
  The latter, only allow H1B for highly paid people. I can't find anything specific about the new requirements.
TuringNYC 6y ago
We already have a system for that -- taxes. Why would you underpay H1B workers? It seems punitive w/o cause. 1. It is unfair to the workers 2. The H1B Programme is for top talent, for talent you cannot find locally. If anything you should overpay for such valuable talent. 3. High H1B salaries also come back to the country in the form of taxes just like for all workers, which should improve schools. Schooling is a shared problem for communities and our country, and should be paid for with taxes -- why would you put the burden of that on immigrant workers? Finally, if despite taxes, we cannot fix our school system, perhaps instead of blaming/punishing immigrants we should be looking at our municipal and state governments.
- Dork1234 6y ago
  K-12 schooling in America is paid through property taxes, so unless they are living in a area with high property taxes you most likely wont be helping much. College level school funding (state/federal) has basically dried up in the past few decades with budget cuts. The idea is affordable public college education is not realistic for most people. I believe this is what the commenter is talking about needing more funding.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > K-12 schooling in America is paid through property taxes. That’s probably not true exclusively anywhere in America, and it's not true predominantly in a number of parts of America. For instance, in California less than 1/4 comes of K-12 funding comes from local property taxes, and the absolute majority comes from State funds which are derived primarily from state income taxes.
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    > The combination of state, local, and federal school funding makes it so that the districts attended by poor students are funded 2.5% more than non-poor students. And even within districts, “schools with less advantaged students spend at least as much (and often significantly more).” ... > Property based funding of schools is not likely to be a very effective target for school reform since our current system does not actually have large differences in the funding of poor students. I think that it is more likely that the dysfunction in the schools is best explained by a lack of continuity and efficiency within the schools that serve poor students. The property tax debate is mostly just an easy but misguided target for explaining the achievement gap. On top of the pure fact that property based taxes have actually still allowed for the progressive funding of schools, we already have examples of states that fund students without a total reliance on local property taxes. Take Michigan. Michigan has a centralized funding source for their students. The state takes an overall tax and then breaks it up evenly across students within the state (there are extra complexities to this that are addressed in this article). Even with these changes in school funding, it does not appear that the reformed funding strategy had any impact on student outcomes. In general, funding is not a good proxy for educational quality. https://medium.com/@coreykeyser/why-conventional-wisdom-on-education-reform-is-wrong-a-primer-f6c0361a48d1 https://medium.com/@coreykeyser/why-conventional-wisdom-on-e...

edoceo 6y ago

Seems like you assume a finite number of nurses. If the pay keeps going up, then new candidate will appear, not immediately but, pretty soon. Market forces and all that.

nrmitchi 6y ago
> I can't afford to wait 4 years for someone to train as a nurse to be available for me to hire From my comment. Nurses require training. I did not assume a finite number of nurses. If I am sick and need a nurse, I need one _right now_. There not being enough of them is a shortage. It may not be a shortage in the future, but right now, it is.
- Lammy 6y ago
  What profession doesn't require training or experience to do well? I wouldn't hire someone who had never built a house before even if I wanted one built right now.
  - nrmitchi 6y ago
    You're right, you would look outside of your country's talent pool to try to find someone qualified to do it for you. Or are you suggesting that you would wait around and be homeless for 4 years until someone local built up enough training and experience in order to build your house? If you're going to suggest that you would wait and "live somewhere else", I would point out that people who are trying to hire, for example, nurses, often don't have that luxury. If they wait 4 years, they'll be dead. No one is suggesting that high skill work status are used for people with no training or experience; they explicitly require training and/or experience in order to qualify. If think you're proving my point; if you need to hire someone right now, and there is no one available locally to do it right now, then there is a shortage, and you need to look outside of your local market.
    - Lammy 6y ago
      Is my "local market" the entire rest of the United States? Or just my state/county/city? This still doesn't seem like you're describing a real problem.

zo1 6y ago

The higher price makes the economics around that job different. It makes it valuable to utilize the existing individuals' time better, it makes employers give them secondary resources to help them perform their job better/faster, and it will punish employers that don't use their highly-paid time properly and to full efficiency. Also, the requirements for said position would be under pressure to be reduced to increase the available labor pool that can perform that job. Not to mention that it'll act as a price-signal for more people to train in that field. It's not a binary "oh no not enough people" type of deal. It's a sliding scale and the closer you get to each side, the higher the incentives are to revert to some sort of equilibrium. It really is quite one-sided (and potentially suspicious) to just try figure out "how can we get more of these people from other countries" instead of looking at all the other locally-available solutions. The same "circle" you speak of will happen regardless, even with plenty of immigration, with the double-whammy being that it'll affect the poorer countries that can't afford to keep those skilled immigrants.