Why can't a 28 American with an English major do a coding bootcamp and find an entry level job? I'm sure if he's reasonable intelligent and ambitious he can. There aren't that many h1b's around competing with him, most American jobs aren't h1b jobs.
That also fixes with the population issue since middle class Americans can't really afford to have kids.
As an H1B, I am paid squarely in the middle of the pay band of my co-workers that share my performance rating and ladder level. If you combine that with all the immigration-related legal expenses my employer is racking up, I cost more then the average employee, here.
I ask - just because there's some shitty headshops that illegally employ H1Bs at below-market rate, don't generalize that to the entire population of visa-holders.
Citation needed, because this is a sweepingly broad statement. To hire an H1B you need to pay the prevailing wage, usually at least $60k, which is more than an entry-level non-STEM college grad is going to be paid outside the Bay Area (it should still be increased to something like $90-95k IMO but that's a different issue).
In addition to that, there are thousands of dollars in legal fees. And of course the application has to win the lottery (which happens in April) and then be approved for the visa (which starts in October). Which means you have to wait at least 7 months after extending an offer for the employee to start.
It is not so hard to afford to raise kids somewhere else, say Salt Lake City or Syracuse, NY.
This is the "comparative advantage" that Adam Smith told you about. India can export kids to the bay area, but so can other parts of the U.S.
I think the best way to counter the abuse is to increase the premium ($100k+) and allow H1Bs to move between companies.
GP was asserting that it is cheaper to hire H1Bs than entry-level grads, which isn't the same thing as what you're describing.
> I think the best way to counter the abuse is to increase the premium ($100k+) and allow H1Bs to move between companies.
I agree re: increasing the minimum to ~$90-100k. Maybe apply a CoL based multiplier so it's $85k in, for instance, Tulsa but $135-145k in the Bay Area.
H1Bs are already allowed to move between companies. But the new company has to apply for a fresh visa, without going through the lottery, and it takes a few weeks, which is a hassle. Plus there's a risk of being denied or going into RFE. I think that rule could be tweaked to allow movement without approval if the offered salary in the new role is higher by a certain minimum percentage (like say 10% increase).
Every time I read something about the cost of having kids I'm looking for some idea of where these people live.
The single largest expense for kids is day care and that's only necessary if you have 2 working parents...and if one of those parents income doesn't more than justify the cost of daycare it's usually a better idea to have a stay at home.
People seriously take for granted the financial value that a stay at home parent brings to a home in overall cost savings. Expenses go up based on lack of time, more so than anything else. It affects your shopping, cooking, home maintenance, yard maintenance, eating out, fuel costs and long term child care costs (after school activities, day care, summer day camps, etc) that you have to worry about when you keep needing to free up time so that you can get to work.
And all of those expenses are higher in densely populate areas where there's more demand for all of the "good" activities.
But it often comes down to a matter of pride to have a stay at home parent.
Edit:
Personally, I think the whole financial independence movement is pretty interesting, and sometimes I get myself through the day by viewing it as my wife being financially independent. Which is halfway there as far as things go.
It compounds in both directions and gets amplified by the continued lack of time due to balancing home and work commitments. Usually it takes a couple of years of exhaustion before people come face to face with the realization that things would be much easier of one person was a stay at home.
The formula is trickiest in the middle. At the higher end, a lot of couples will hire a nanny that can provide many of the same benefits as a stay at home. At the lower end, the decision is fairly easy.
It's in the middle where it's toughest to come to grips with it.
I have no idea how other ppl here afford kids and manage to save. We spend $30k on day care and another $12k on health premiums alone.
Also, our work health insurance is shit, so $200 gets taken out of my paycheck each week for that, which puts it right around the $12k you mentioned.
Daycare is stupid expensive. Healthcare is stupid expensive. We handle the former by having my wife stay home. The latter is just an unfortunate fact of life.
I really don't know how much it costs to live on the coasts, but on a developer salary you can live very comfortably in the Midwest (Ames, Iowa here).
My wife and I are in the same position. We pay $209 a month for “healthcare” coverage that has a $700 yearly deductible. If either of us got sick or injuries we would be totally screwed. The US system is broken. We have massive wealth inequality, an educational system in crisis, and a toxic political system.
I agree that healthcare in the US is completely broken. It is in fact one of my favorite things to gripe about to anyone who will listen or who happens to be in my vicinity at the wrong moment.
I think our current "out of pocket max" is somewhere around $6k/year. The bill for having twins blew through that pretty well. When we had our first child, our deductible was roughly twice as much and I think we maybe just scratched the out of pocket max. Those insurance premiums were only a third of what we pay now though, which was a better trade off in my opinion.
Would we be financially ruined by running into something like that again? No. Would we be majorly inconvenienced? Yes.
- $100-$199 is middle
- $200-$499 is upper middle
- $500-$999 is lower upper
Etc.
That’s the scale I’ve always used (household income).
Most millennials fall in the lower middle or middle bucket.
- 61% of incomes are below lower middle
- 26% of incomes are lower middle (median being $61,822)
- 10% of incomes are middle
- 3% (nearly) of incomes are upper-middle
- <1% is remaining…
Data from https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
Caveat, this is individual income, and you're talking about household income, so not quite the same for couples where both work.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
Your lower-upper class is a subset of the top 1% of incomes.
https://dqydj.com/united-states-household-income-brackets-pe...
~40 years ago this "middle class" standard of living was readily attainable for anyone who diligent, reasonable intelligent, and willing to work hard. Not only that, it was standard for such a lifestyle to be achievable with only one household member working. Now the much more common circumstance is that both adults work, many of the above living conditions are barely achievable, if at all, and many families are one financial hiccup away from disaster.
We can debate over the various reasons for this change in the economic landscape for working people, but there is no debate to be had over the reality of it. The change has been substantive. Its much, much harder for the average working person today to live comfortably and raise a family than it was just a few decades ago.
Also, the social safety net in the US isn't great, but it definitely exists. You can be a pretty big screw up and still have a roof over your head. You just won't have much else.
If I told you I was going to beat you up and steal your money every night, it doesn't mean you should just smile and accept it as inevitable, even if that's really my plan.
>We still live like kings compared to most of human history.
We have more collective wealth than any time in human history, and more collective wealth than we did ~40 years ago when working people had the living conditions I described above. As far as I'm concerned, there's no "good" or "acceptable" reason that the artificial system ("the economy") that we designed and continue to maintain, that has resulted in far worse living conditions for the average American, should not be changed so that our collective wealth is more evenly distributed among those who participate in our system. Especially dishonest and (more frequently) ignorant people will blame the, "free market" for the massive (and growing) disparity in wealth, but there is nothing about our economic system that is "free". From our central bank to our byzantine "regulatory" structure to our legal system to our tax code to currency control and beyond, we have a financial system that is tightly controlled, regulated, and guided by powerful, entrenched interests at the upper echelon of the financial world. It isn't even useful to draw a distinction between governmental and non-governmental entities at this level, because they are the same. Our economy has been guided and controlled by a rotating door of corporatists (or whatever other adjective you choose to describe our economic oligarchs) to ensure wealth consolidation.
We can either recognize the problem - that our whole system has been off the rails for some time and is horribly broken - or we can continue down the same path of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer until we reach a breaking point. Hopefully we choose the former path but unfortunately the latter seems more likely.
I didn't say smile and accept it. I said "adjust your lifestyle". The rules changed, so how you play needs to change with it.
If you tell me you're going to beat me up and take my money every time you see me, I'm going to make sure we don't cross paths.
My point is that there is no reason to be surprised at what is happening because people have been telling us that is what will happen.
The fact is, there are a bunch of people who are in effect living a life of "He told me he'd beat me up and take my money every day, and sure enough every time I see him, he beats me up and takes my money, but maybe tomorrow he won't!"
When someone shows you their cards, take advantage of it, is all I'm saying.
You also have to eliminate all tax-benefits that americans receive that foreigners don't. And then you have to make public all wages of american citizens, to equal the information asymetry
When I graduated, there were companies offering me 30-40k a year in cities like Seattle. I have friends that could tell you the same story, some who took the opportunity because of the entry level market being saturated.
Bootcamp graduates are often placed in incredibly exploitative contracting environments (often in companies that also underpay, abuse and threaten H1Bs) which are farmed out to larger companies looking to get work done cheap. Though this has just been my personal experience and that of my friends. They leverage desperation.
There are a variety of high demand and well paying jobs, but not everyone is interested in them, or even cut out for them.
Because the number of openings for entry tech workers is essentially infinite. (Wait, what?)
Because non-technical work is regarded as completely worthless and there is more merit in being a minimally-competent HTML-slinger.
Would you rather hire an entry-level domestic worker for the same salary as an experienced foreign worker?