This was reflected in the 2.5% unemployment rate for computer scientists and the below two percent unemployment rate for engineers in 2006. This problem is two-fold: The lack of American kids enrolling in and graduating from math, science, and engineering programs and a U.S. high-skilled Visa system that is broken.
This April, within two days of the start of taking applications, the U.S. government received 133,000 applications for 65,000 H-1B visas – those visas reserved for high skilled individuals. And this is for jobs starting in October of 2007.
An examination of the sectors reveals that the high-tech manufacturing industry added 5,100 net jobs in 2006. Software services and engineering and tech services employment were up in 2006 for the third year in a row, increasing by 88,500 jobs and 66,300 jobs, respectively.
Only the communications services industry continues to struggle, losing 13,300 net jobs in 2006.
State by State
On a state-by-state basis, Cyberstates 2007 shows that tech employment gains occurred in 40 cyberstates in 2005, the most recent data available. The last year that so many states saw this much tech job growth was in 2000.
While it is no surprise that California led the nation in net job creation, Florida saw the second largest gain, adding 10,900 tech jobs in 2005. This is the second year in a row that Florida was among the top five states by tech employment creation.
An examination of the ten leading cyberstates by employment reveals that Florida was also the fastest growing state by rate of growth (+4.1 percent), followed by Virginia (+3.0 percent).
Virginia surpassed Colorado to lead the nation with the highest concentration of tech industry workers as a percent of the private sector workforce (8.9%). Until now, Colorado had owned this distinction ever since AeA began publishing the Cyberstates report.
The report also found that after dropping slightly in 2005, venture capital investment in the technology industry rose by $285 million, to $12.7 billion in 2006. High tech accounts for half of all venture capital investments in the nation.
R&D expenditures by high-tech companies jumped by 22% in 2004, the most recent data available, totaling $70.6 billion, a record breaking amount of R&D.
Cyberstates 2007 Key Facts