home > by issue > economics > labor > SSRN: H-1B Visas, Offshoring, and the Wages of US Information Technology Workers
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| Authors: | Prasanna Tambe Lorin M. Hitt |
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April 14, 2009
A working paper released by researchers from New York University's Stern School of Business and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania dispels the myth that globalization generates no losers. The study looks at how compensation for domestic workers is affected depending on whether or not employers are using offshore and H-1B employment.
Excerpt: We use new sources of micro-data to estimate the impact that H-1B and offshore employment have had on the short-run wages of domestic IT workers. Our primary data source describes employers, demographics, and wages for a segment of the US IT workforce. We integrate these data with external datasets describing employers' H-1B applications, available through Department of Labor databases, and offshore employment, measured through the self-reported employment of a large sample of offshore IT workers. After controlling for offshoring levels, our estimates indicate that H-1B admissions at the current levels are associated with about 5% lower short-run wages for computer programmers and systems analysts, and little to no decrease for most other types of IT workers.
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