Even when making policy that might last years, elected officials tend to look to the moment. That’s particularly true in the case of immigration, where the unemployment rate at a particular time influences whether or not to relax or restrict immigration quotas. It’s happened before on skilled immigration.

In 1998 and 2000, unemployment rates were around 4 percent nationally. That made it possible, though still not easy, to increase the quotas for high skilled foreign nationals on H-1B visas. Many of those individuals come from India.

Today, H-1B applications are down when compared to earlier years, but it is still likely the quota of 65,000 (plus a 20,000 exemption for recipients of a master’s degree from a U.S. university) will be reached before the end of the 2012 fiscal year.

There are several changes that could be made to improve U.S. immigration policy, particularly for high skilled professionals: increase the H-1B quota or exemptions from the annual cap, increase the quota or exemptions from the annually 140,000 limit for employment-based green cards, eliminate the per country limit, and exempt more individuals from the burdensome requirements of labor certification when applying for a green card. Yet the fate of such reforms rests as much on perceptions of the current job market as to whether they represent good long-term policy.

New Report on the Tech Job Market

Contrary to popular perceptions, a new report from the tech job website Dice.com finds that the job market is good for people with talent in technology fields. (The report can be found here.)

The report cites Dr. Tim Lindquist, a professor of computer science and engineering, Arizona State University’s Polytechnic College. “I can’t tell you the last time I had a student, even some of our poorer students, tell me they had trouble finding a job,” says Lindquist. “None of our graduates have trouble getting jobs, and we have weekly requests, very consistent, looking for people.”

The report states that “Incredible . . . describes well the challenge facing American businesses in need of tech skilled new hires in 2011. From coast to coast and metro to metro, companies in need of tech help say they’re struggling mightily to match open positions with qualified people and state-of-the-marketplace skill sets.”

Anne Hunter, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, estimates, “There are easily two or three jobs for every computer science grad.”

Dice.com found a 60 percent increase in the number of tech jobs posted on its site from a low of two years ago. In other words, the job market for high skilled workers in tech-related fields has picked up substantially.

What’s Most in Demand?

In analyzing the job postings, Dice.com has determined that the most frequently requested skills today are Oracle, followed by J3EE/Java, C,C++, C#, and Project Management and SQL. (See Table 1)

Table 1

Most Frequently Requested Skills on Dice.com

                                      Source: America’s Tech Talent Crunch, Dice.com, May 2011.

Products demanded by consumers are helping to drive the tech job market. The fastest growing skills requested in job postings in the first quarter of 2011 compared to the first quarter of 2010 are Android, Cloud, iPhone, JavaScript and Peoplesoft. (See Table 2)

Table 2

Fastest Growing Skills Requested on Dice.com

                                               Source: America’s Tech Talent Crunch, Dice.com, May 2011.

Conclusion

Even though there is no evidence immigration affects the unemployment rate over time, perceptions about the job market figure into the calculations made by elected officeholders. The reality of an improved job market in high tech jobs could help tip the balance favorably if smaller scale reforms on employment-based immigration are proposed in Congress. That would improve the situation faced by employers and high skilled foreign nationals.