ITAA's New H-1B Campaign

Date: Thursday, May 09, 2002 3:18 PM

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I warned that whenever ITAA president Harris Miller starts appearing in
the
media it is usually a very bad omen. That usually means that the
corporations he represents are telling him that they want another
lobbying
campaign for H-1B. He bared his fangs in the article below.

Harris Miller concedes that "individual" workers are "showing pain" but
that
didn't deter him from proclaiming that increasing H-1B is a good idea.
In
predictable fashion he said that it would be a mistake to reduce H-1B. I
can't decipher his logic for concluding that 12 years ago we learned
that
H-1B is necessary even when recessions are in full swing (especially
since
H-1B was born in 1990) - I'll leave that up to your imagination. Miller
managed to shrug off the concerns of workers who are unemployed by
marginalizing them as "individuals". He must think that H-1B should be
increased until all workers feel the pain.

Harris Miller must be very worried that the limit of 195,000 H-1Bs for
2003
will drop to 65,000 in 2004. I think he is not only going to lobby to
increase the limit for 2003 but to extend the limit indefinitely.

I just got an email message from someone on my mailing list that I
thought
worth sharing with you:

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Rob,

I just sent this letter to Harris Miller at the ITAA earlier this
morning.
Maybe you could publish it online at your website; It might should be
something like this:

To all the unemployed or underemployed techies out there, I have a
little
bit of a better of an idea; Send your resumes to Harris Miller of the
ITAA.
Since he thinks there is such a shortage of programmers in the world
today,
we such just inundate his office with our resumes and let these people
know
that we are not fooled and we are taking the fight directly to our
enemies.
I think we should all our letters with a cover letter like this one and
let
him know that gig is up and that we know what is really going on. Here
is
the address to the ITAA:

Information Technology
Association of America
http://www.itaa.org
1401 Wilson Boulevard
Suite 1100
Arlington, VA 22209
attn: Harris Miller

Send your resumes and flood their offices. Maybe we can our point across
then!

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http://www.eweek.com/print_article/0,3668,a=26432,00.asp

May 7, 2002
IT Work Force Contracts

By Lisa Vaas

First, the bad news: The U.S. IT work force shrank by an aggregate of
528,496 workers in 2001, with companies hiring 2.1 million IT workers
while
laying off about 2.6 million, according to the Information Technology
Association of America's third annual IT work force study released
Monday.
Next, the hopeful news: IT hiring managers are forecasting happy days
around
the corner, according to the report, with aggregate demand for 1.1
million
IT workers in 2002.
If hiring managers live up to the expectations expressed in the
report-based
on phone interviews with 532 hiring managers--it will mean the IT job
market
will have risen from the dead-or at least the comatose-with demand for
IT
professionals increasing 27 percent this year over last. But even that
rebound wouldn't put the IT work force back where it was in 2000: It's
only
71 percent of the number of IT jobs that needed to be filled just two
years
ago.

While demand for IT workers may be on the upswing, hiring managers--as
they
have in the past--said a significant number of open positions will go
unfilled because of a chronic gap between the skills required by hiring
organizations and the skills possessed by most applications. In fact,
half
of those 1.1 million jobs that could be added will go unfilled due to
the
skills gap, the report said.

The ITAA, an Arlington, Va., trade group representing IT product and
service
providers, has historically used this purported gap as ammunition in
lobbying for increases in the quota of H-1B visas, which allow hiring
organizations to use IT professionals from outside the United States.
With
the H-1B quota due for consideration before Congress again next year,
the
ITAA plans to ask for another increase in the quota despite the rough
2001
experienced by many laid-off IT workers.

"There's lots of individual workers and companies showing pain," granted
ITAA President Harris Miller. "That's what the data show. But we don't
want
to make a mistake and repeat what occurred 12 years ago when this
country
went through a recession. ... The conclusion reached-and it was false-by
education and by companies was that we didn't need people with technical
skills."

Besides planning to increase hiring, managers are also turning to other
sources for their IT needs. Indeed, the report cited a 17 percent
increase
in outsourcing in 2001 compared to 2000. And, according to experts,
increasingly that outsourcing is coming from offshore providers.
According
to a separate study by Meta Group Research Fellow Howard Rubin, the
United
States' share of the estimated 5 million global IT jobs is shrinking.

This country now has about half of the worldwide IT work force, and that
work force is growing at a rate of about 10 percent annually. Worldwide
IT
work force expansion rates, meanwhile, have been growing by up to 20
percent
yearly, with countries such as Canada, India and the Philippines
experiencing a growth rate two to four times that of the United States.

As for the type of worker IT managers are looking for, technical support
workers won't gain much ground. Companies are predicting they'll hire
281,406 help desk types in 2002. That's up from 218,238 last year, but
less
than half of the 616,055 that hiring managers said were needed in 2000.
Network design and administration skills, meanwhile, will be in big
demand
with 199,348 hires forecast in the coming year. Programmers and software
engineers are the next most sought-after position, with 161,487
anticipated
hirings in 2002.

The ITAA report was based on interviews with hiring managers at 155 IT
firms
and 377 non-IT firms between Feb. 11 and March 14. It also found that
workers at IT firms have suffered disproportionately, with total IT jobs
in
that sector dropping by 15 percent. IT jobs at non-IT firms dropped by 4
percent. The South, which the largest percentage (3,406,519) of IT
workers
call home, also shed the largest percentage of workers, at 34 percent,
or
181,928 workers.

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