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You have a good point that it's very hard to define a shortage by lack of applications, when there is always a certain amount of churn. It would be much better

You have a good point that it's very hard to define a shortage by lack of applications, when there is always a certain amount of churn. It would be much better to simply define this as an economic test: 1) Are the prevailing wages for a position rising faster than inflation? 2) Is unemployment in the position both low and remaining flat? Seems hard to claim a shortage if either of those is false, and there is little gaming to be done for simple government reported labor statistics, recent news notwithstanding.

darth_avocado 1y ago
The funny thing is that prevailing wage determination is also done as part of the process and if your wages are lower than median, your application has a higher risk or audit and/or rejection. No reason why you can’t update the process to be more data driven, they already have all the information they need.
lgleason 1y ago
If this was to be implemented, you would see a large lobbying effort by the tech companies around how unemployment is calculated and these numbers would end up being under-reported to keep the supply of cheap labor coming in. You will also start to see people with ties to big tech being hired to actually compile the data.
- darth_avocado 1y ago
  And that is worse than what you have right now? The idea of determining skill shortages using data isn’t new, nor is it ineffective. Other countries have been doing it for a while. E.g. New Zealand
foogazi 1y ago
> It would be much better to simply define this as an economic test: 1) Are the prevailing wages for a position rising faster than inflation? We don’t even know what inflation is anymore
stikypad 1y ago
For tech jobs, the answer to 2 is a resounding no. https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/10/the-computer-science-dream-has-become-a-nightmare/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/10/the-computer-science-dream...

darth_avocado 1y ago

The funny thing is that prevailing wage determination is also done as part of the process and if your wages are lower than median, your application has a higher risk or audit and/or rejection. No reason why you can’t update the process to be more data driven, they already have all the information they need.

lgleason 1y ago

If this was to be implemented, you would see a large lobbying effort by the tech companies around how unemployment is calculated and these numbers would end up being under-reported to keep the supply of cheap labor coming in. You will also start to see people with ties to big tech being hired to actually compile the data.

darth_avocado 1y ago
And that is worse than what you have right now? The idea of determining skill shortages using data isn’t new, nor is it ineffective. Other countries have been doing it for a while. E.g. New Zealand

foogazi 1y ago

> It would be much better to simply define this as an economic test: 1) Are the prevailing wages for a position rising faster than inflation? We don’t even know what inflation is anymore

stikypad 1y ago

For tech jobs, the answer to 2 is a resounding no. https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/10/the-computer-science-dream-has-become-a-nightmare/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/10/the-computer-science-dream...