We keep hearing about this potentially crippling shortage of high skilled workers needed to keep America at the forefront of innovation and world leadership. Meanwhile, our graduating college students can’t find jobs in the broader or entry level versions of these fields. What gives?
I am not an expert in AI, quantum computing, robotics or cybersecurity, some the fields where we need these high skilled workers. For example, there are apparently three AI job openings worldwide right now for every skilled AI worker.
But I am tracking the two debates which demonstrate the supply and the demand side of this picture and if you put them together you can see: “Houston, we have a problem,” (to harken back to the glory days of an earlier moonshot).
The first debate. Importing talent
Since the space moonshot, we have come to rely on significant foreign expertise to fuel America’s innovation. How do we switch horses now when we are running at such speed, with trillions invested and an international race to world dominance in manufacturing and new technologies?
We don’t, for now.
We’ve watched the President wrestle out loud with this conundrum all year. His base, and many others, argue we should be saving the highly paid roles for Americans, like the 1.6 million open AI jobs in the US. In fact, exactly a year ago, the first intra-MAGA fight boiled to the surface, before Trump even took office, when Elon Musk tried to convince the President-elect that he couldn’t run his rocket company or his electric car company without importing foreign expertise. We just didn’t have the talent stateside.