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by cuillevel3 4712 days ago
Is it true IT wages are stagnating?
1 comments

This paper

http://www.epi.org/publication/bp359-guestworkers-high-skill...

seems to say yes:

"Analyzing new data, drawing on a number of our prior analyses, and reviewing other studies of wages and employment in the STEM and IT industries, we find that industry trends are strikingly consistent: ... Wages have remained flat, with real wages hovering around their late 1990s levels."

EDIT: if you're skeptical of EPI, Brookings also agrees:

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2013/05/10-h1b-visa...

DOUBLE EDIT: to echo what I've said in other comments, Brookings disagrees with EPI's findings. PBS selectively quoted them.

Wages have been stagnating generally, including in many industries unaffected by the guest worker program, so I'm not sure they are showing a causal relation.
Table 2 in the Brookings paper says the opposite.

" In recent years, from 2009 to 2011, nominal wage growth for U.S.-born workers with at least a bachelor’s degree has been high for the most prominent H-1B occupations. The average native-born worker experienced flat annual growth in wages over that period (0.0 percent), but wage growth for those in computer occupations—the largest H-1B category—grew by 1.3 percent each year since 2009 and 2.7 percent each year since 2000 for those with a bachelor’s degree. Wage growth was even higher for engineers, with 2.1 percent growth since 2009 and 3 percent growth since 2000."

what about real wages?