American science and technology graduates are facing elevated unemployment and growing competition as federal officials investigate major technology companies’ use of foreign worker visa programs, intensifying debate over whether H-1B hiring supplements or displaces domestic workers.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
WASHINGTON — American graduates entering science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers are facing a difficult employment market as technology companies continue sponsoring foreign workers, prompting renewed scrutiny of federal visa programs and allegations that some employers use overseas labor to reduce costs, according to an October 29 investigation by Sean Moran of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
More than 500,000 students graduate from American colleges and universities with STEM degrees annually, entering fields traditionally associated with strong earning potential, technological innovation and long-term career opportunities.
However, recent employment data indicate that some graduates, particularly those pursuing computer science and engineering positions, are encountering higher unemployment than graduates in other disciplines.
A New Mexico State University analysis of STEM careers identifies engineering, computer science and related occupations as fields with substantial long-term employment opportunities. Yet the current hiring environment has raised questions about how many entry-level positions are available to American graduates.
At the center of the debate is the federal H-1B visa program, which permits employers to temporarily hire foreign professionals in specialty occupations requiring specialized knowledge and educational qualifications.
According to FWD.us, an immigration advocacy organization, approximately 730,000 H-1B workers were living in the United States as of January 2025, along with an estimated 550,000 spouses and children holding dependent status.
Supporters maintain that the program helps American companies recruit specialized talent, remain internationally competitive and maintain operations within the United States.
Critics argue that certain employers use it to hire foreign workers instead of qualified Americans, potentially suppressing wages and weakening domestic employment opportunities.
John Miano, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, challenged the program’s underlying purpose in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“H-1B was designed to replace Americans with cheap foreign workers. All the stuff about [labor] shortages, global talent, was all gaslighting the public to sell a program that otherwise isn’t sellable,” Miano said.
Jeremy Beck, co-president of NumbersUSA, argued that American universities already produce more STEM graduates than the domestic labor market can absorb into corresponding occupations.
“Before this AI boom happened, for the past decade or so, you’ve got at least 400,000 American graduates getting STEM degrees, and fewer than half of them end up finding careers in STEM occupations,” Beck told the DCNF.
“There is no need for a temporary labor gap. It is clearly just displacing Americans and exploiting foreign guest workers,” he added.
Those claims remain contested. STEM degree holders frequently work in management, finance and other occupations that use technical skills but are not always classified as STEM jobs. Employment outside a narrowly defined STEM occupation does not necessarily indicate unemployment or displacement by visa holders.
The American Immigration Council’s analysis of the H-1B program argues that highly skilled immigration helps businesses obtain specialized employees and can contribute to economic growth and domestic job creation.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has similarly warned that restrictions on skilled-worker visas could encourage companies to relocate operations to countries such as Canada, China and India.
Nevertheless, recent employment figures demonstrate significant challenges for some American graduates.
According to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data, the unemployment rate among recent college graduates reached 5.6% in June 2026, compared with 2.9% among college graduates overall.
The difference indicates that recent graduates are experiencing greater difficulty entering the workforce than established degree holders.
The New York Fed’s figures for 2024 showed unemployment rates of 7% among computer science graduates and 7.8% among computer engineering graduates.
Other technical disciplines, including mathematics and information systems, also reported relatively elevated unemployment.
“Art history majors have a lower unemployment rate than computer science majors now,” Miano said.
However, the Fed’s data also show that computer science and related majors generally experience lower underemployment and higher median earnings than many other fields over their careers.
These differences illustrate that unemployment shortly after graduation and long-term employment prospects are distinct measures.
Artificial intelligence has introduced additional uncertainty into entry-level technology employment.
Research from Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab found that employment among younger workers in occupations highly exposed to generative AI declined relative to employment in less-exposed occupations.
The study identified a 19% relative employment decline among early-career workers in highly AI-exposed roles, including software development and customer service.
Researchers found that the decline was concentrated in occupations where AI could substitute for human tasks rather than complement employees’ work.
The findings suggest that technological change may be reducing demand for some entry-level positions even as demand for more experienced workers remains stable.
The simultaneous effects of AI adoption, corporate hiring decisions and foreign-worker programs complicate efforts to identify a single cause of declining employment opportunities.
A May 2026 Center for Immigration Studies report estimated that more than 7 million U.S.-born workers with STEM degrees were employed in non-STEM occupations.
The organization argued that reducing high-skilled immigration could increase opportunities for domestic graduates.
Beck questioned whether students should assume large debts to pursue degrees in fields where companies can hire foreign workers.
“Why put your family into debt to get a degree in one of these occupations when you know that the government is offering a financial incentive to employers to either not hire you in the first place or to push you out the door once you start making real money at that organization or in that occupation?” he asked.
The economic consequences of H-1B hiring have been examined in academic research, although findings vary.
Notre Dame economist Kirk Doran found in a 2022 paper that additional H-1B employment was associated with reduced employment of other workers within certain firms.
The research estimated that each additional H-1B worker displaced approximately 1.5 other employees under the conditions studied, while producing limited measurable improvements in firm innovation.
Other researchers have found that highly skilled immigration can contribute to innovation, entrepreneurship and employment growth.
Ron Hira, a professor at Howard University who has studied high-skilled immigration, has criticized claims of an across-the-board STEM worker shortage.
In a 2022 article for Issues in Science and Technology, Hira described assertions of substantial shortages as frequently lacking adequate evidence.
The debate has intensified following action by the Trump administration against several major technology companies.
On October 8, Vice President JD Vance announced that Microsoft and Adobe would be suspended from participating in the Department of Labor’s permanent labor certification program, commonly known as PERM.
The administration also identified several information technology and outsourcing companies, including Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini.
PERM is generally used by employers seeking to sponsor foreign workers for employment-based permanent residency. It is distinct from the H-1B program, which authorizes temporary employment.
The suspensions therefore affect access to a pathway toward green cards rather than automatically canceling existing H-1B visas.
Vance accused Microsoft of relying on foreign workers while laying off American employees.
“Last year, Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers. At the same time, the company benefited from 6,300 H-1B visas,” Vance said during an October press conference.
He further argued that the figures demonstrated a broader problem with the immigration system.
“For every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign, indentured servants,” Vance said. “Our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers.”
However, the comparison between layoffs and visa filings does not, by itself, establish that individual American employees were replaced by foreign workers.
Microsoft disputed the administration’s characterization, explaining that most of its H-1B petitions concerned existing employees.
“These were not to hire new people. The remaining filings for new employees were for individuals already legally in the United States who decided to come work for us, and they equal only 1% of our U.S. workforce. They are not new arrivals to our country,” the company said.
Microsoft stated that approximately 80% of its 6,000 H-1B applications involved extensions or changes to the immigration status of existing workers.
“Microsoft only files H-1B petitions for those who meet the rigorous standards of this visa category. We pay our employees some of the highest compensation in the tech sector, and our wages are among the highest of all H-1B filings. We pay our H-1B employees the same as any other employees doing comparable work,” the company added.
The administration has also pursued broader changes to employment-based immigration.
President Donald Trump sought to impose a $100,000 fee on certain new H-1B applications, substantially increasing the cost of hiring foreign workers through the program.
A federal judge blocked that fee, prompting the Department of Homeland Security to consider its next steps while complying with the ruling.
“USCIS is working to ensure that employment-based visa programs are used primarily to supplement, not supplant American workers,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson Zach Kahler told the DCNF.
Beck supported higher fees as a means of reducing what he considers a financial incentive to hire foreign workers.
He said additional reforms would still be necessary.
“If it can’t be fixed, then Congress is going to have to eliminate it,” Beck said.
Miano offered a similarly critical assessment.
“The problem with H-1B is that it works exactly like Congress intended it to work,” he said, arguing that the program was “designed to be broken.”
Lawmakers have introduced legislation to restructure the program.
Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., introduced the End H-1B Visa Abuse Act of 2026, designated H.R. 8443, in April.
The proposal would initially pause H-1B visa issuance for three years before imposing additional restrictions, including reducing the annual cap from 65,000 to 25,000 and replacing the lottery selection process with a wage-based system.
It would also establish higher wage requirements, require employers to demonstrate that qualified American workers were unavailable and restrict the use of third-party staffing agencies.
Crane accused major corporations of exploiting the visa program to reduce labor costs.
“The H-1B system has morphed into a betrayal of hardworking citizens. Instead of hiring talented young Americans graduating with STEM degrees, massive corporations are exploiting this fraud-ridden program to import cheap labor and pad their profit margins,” Crane told the DCNF.
“As Members of Congress, we should be doing everything in our power to protect the next generation of our workforce,” he continued.
Crane described his proposal as the “strongest H-1B reform possible.”
“It’s time to end this abuse for good,” he said.
The measure had attracted 14 Republican cosponsors but remained in the House Judiciary Committee as of October 29.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has introduced separate legislation intended to reduce exemptions that allow universities, research institutions and certain nonprofit employers to obtain H-1B workers outside the program’s annual numerical cap.
“American jobs shouldn’t go to foreign workers. My Visa Cap Enforcement Act will close loopholes in the H-1B visa program to give American STEM students a fair chance in the job market,” Cotton told the DCNF.
Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have also introduced legislation proposing changes to the H-1B and L-1 visa programs.
L-1 visas allow multinational companies to transfer employees from overseas offices to positions in the United States.
Critics argue that the program’s requirements can permit companies to transfer foreign employees without first demonstrating that suitable American candidates are unavailable.
Supporters contend that multinational businesses need flexibility to transfer experienced personnel across international operations.
Kevin Lynn, executive director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy and founder of U.S. Tech Workers, welcomed the attention congressional Republicans have given the issue.
“Republicans that do identify as America First are good on this issue,” Lynn told the DCNF.
The proposed legislation has not advanced to final passage, leaving the existing immigration framework largely intact while the administration pursues executive and regulatory changes.
The dispute highlights competing explanations for the difficulties facing American STEM graduates.
Critics of employment-based immigration argue that expanding access to foreign labor weakens opportunities for domestic workers and enables some employers to minimize wage expenses.
Business organizations and immigration advocates counter that specialized foreign professionals can address genuine workforce needs, support innovation and help retain technology investment in the United States.
The available data confirm that many recent graduates face substantial challenges entering technology occupations, particularly amid reduced hiring and the adoption of artificial intelligence.
They do not establish that H-1B employment is responsible for all or most of those difficulties.
As federal investigations continue and Congress considers possible reforms, the unresolved question is how immigration policy should balance American graduates’ employment prospects, employers’ demand for specialized skills and the economic contributions of foreign professionals.
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