Communications of the ACM
Study: U.s. Attracting Fewer Educated, Highly-Skilled Migrants
A new study finds the U.S. is no longer drawing as large a share of the world's highly educated and skilled workers as it once did.
Credit: Nicola Romagna/Flickr
The U.S. is no longer drawing as large a share of the world's highly educated and skilled workers as it once did, according to a new University of Washington (UW) study.
UW professor Emilio Zagheni and his team used a data-tracking method to study the movements of members of the professional social networking service LinkedIn. Zagheni says it is the first time a worldwide data set has been used to test the view that the U.S. is the number one destination for the world's highly educated and skilled workers; the study found this trend is changing.
Although the U.S. attracted 27 percent of migrating professionals and nearly a quarter of the graduates from the world's top 500 universities in 2000, those percentages had dropped to 13 and 12 percent, respectively, by 2012. Meanwhile, the trend is moving in the other direction in Asia, which drew 10 percent of professional migrants in 2000 but 26 percent in 2012. The largest decline in skilled migrants to the U.S. has been seen in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, falling from 37 percent in 2000 to 25 percent in 2012.
The researchers suggest possible causes for the change include the U.S.'s difficult visa system and the economic crashes of 2008 and the earlier dot-com bust.
From University of Washington News and Information
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