Third International Metropolis Conference, Israel, November 1998
COMPARATIVE EXPERIENCES WITH TEMPORARY WORKERS:
THE UNITED STATES*

CONCLUSION

What role do temporary workers play in the U.S.? On the one hand, the temporary admission system is both growing in numbers, not the least because of the recent increases in the cap on speciality workers (H-1B), and it is contributing to an increase in the skill composition of permanent admissions. At the same time, the available research as discussed here suggests that there is little direct impact of immigrants on the high-technology labor market.

As discussed above, competition from immigrants may dissuade natives from pursuing crowded scientific and engineering fields. However, in either the academic or private-sector labor markets there may be a long trail of effects whereby minorities are dissuaded from the long-haul in the postdoctoral labor market now dominated by foreign temporary workers, or from seeking employment in the private sector which seemingly gives hiring preference to immigrants and white natives. But these long-trails are difficult to tease out from the existing data and surely are confounded by the fact that minorities and women tend not to pursue scientific and engineering studies long before they reach college.

Further, there are inconsistent findings regarding the marketplace as it is. Field research on temporary workers in San Francisco and Houston did not find undue competition with temporary workers in the academic labor market at the level of instructor or professor in the sciences, possibly because of the highly selective hiring process at that level (Lowell, 1998). However, the field research did find instances of competition among postdoctoral students. In the private sector, the field research also uncovered clear instances of the abuse of the temporary system in so-called job shops. These are out contracting outfits, in this instance in computer programing, that hire large numbers of temporary foreign labor who they underpay in order to underbid competitors. Yet other field research efforts find that the movement of temporary workers, while it has "significant deficiencies," reflects the reality of today’s global marketplace. These workers expand employment opportunities and help the U.S. stay competitive (Keely, 1998).

The issue of shortages or employer demand, in turn, is the hottest topic in the policymaking arena. Most recently the passage of an expansion of the speciality worker (H-1B) visa largely turned around claims of a "shortage" of information technology (IT) workers. There is not doubt that the available 65,000 visas were issued well before the FY 1998 year was finished, which is consistent with high demand. This is not the place to enter into all the nuances of this debate, i.e., claims that employers prefer young workers with just-the-right skills and drive (often immigrants from U.S. colleges) at the expense of older IT workers, claims that the shortage is manufactured by employers to justify the importation of "cheaper" immigrants, claims that employers refuse to take responsibility for training their workforce, etc. Suffice it to say that, even if the industry is "struggling to fill vacancies," most experts do not believe that there is a clear shortage of IT workers (Jerome Levy Economics Institute, 1998).

It is not difficult to find observers who will take strong stances on the pros and cons of foreign temporary workers. And there is a lot of data that suggests that concentrations of temporary workers exist in academia and in specialized private-sector occupations which raise concerns. Beside the field research just noted, there is reason to be concerned with the so-called job shops, even if there are few, because of they tend to violate the terms of the temporary visa and harm the labor market to some extent. However, the evidence is yet to be systematically and convincingly marshaled to convince a large share of the policymaking audience that something is amiss. Rather, temporary workers are widely seen as playing a positive role in the U.S. economy.

REFERENCES

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