Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

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The companies are just trying to work with the flawed system that is place. Even if a role is in shortage, it’s impossible for a company by itself to prove that there is a shortage. If in the total market, there are 10000 jobs for “position X” and there are 8000 total US citizens that qualify for that role, if you are a company that has an H1B for the other 2000 positions, there is no way you can prove there is a shortage. The system requires you to put out an advertisement and prove there are no US citizens. The minute you put out a generic requirement, at least the few people from the pool of 8000 will apply even if they are employed in the same role because… drum role…people switch jobs. So even if overall there is a shortage for a specific position, there is no way an individual company can prove it when they are required to actively recruit for the position.

The system is flawed and it forces immigrants and companies to work with the rules that are set. And people who don’t fully understand the system are angry about it.

You have a good point that it's very hard to define a shortage by lack of applications, when there is always a certain amount of churn.

It would be much better to simply define this as an economic test:

1) Are the prevailing wages for a position rising faster than inflation?

2) Is unemployment in the position both low and remaining flat?

Seems hard to claim a shortage if either of those is false, and there is little gaming to be done for simple government reported labor statistics, recent news notwithstanding.

The funny thing is that prevailing wage determination is also done as part of the process and if your wages are lower than median, your application has a higher risk or audit and/or rejection. No reason why you can’t update the process to be more data driven, they already have all the information they need.

If this was to be implemented, you would see a large lobbying effort by the tech companies around how unemployment is calculated and these numbers would end up being under-reported to keep the supply of cheap labor coming in.

You will also start to see people with ties to big tech being hired to actually compile the data.

And that is worse than what you have right now?

The idea of determining skill shortages using data isn’t new, nor is it ineffective. Other countries have been doing it for a while. E.g. New Zealand

> It would be much better to simply define this as an economic test: 1) Are the prevailing wages for a position rising faster than inflation?

We don’t even know what inflation is anymore

For tech jobs, the answer to 2 is a resounding no.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/10/the-computer-science-dream...

You're missing the entire point of a free labour market system. If there are 10000 jobs for "position x" and only 8000 citizens who qualify, then companies are forced to compete with each other to attract those workers. Usually by paying higher wages. Or companies are forced to train people to get qualified workers. Can't do either? Then shut down your business and retire in eternal shame for being a worthless failure.

That's the entire idea, that's what a nation is built for. A "shortage" of workers is exactly the desired result in a healthy free market nation.

If it's impossible to do right then we need to get rid of H1Bs entirely.

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