Billionaire hedge fund manager Christopher Hohn, an investor in Google, admits there is no labor shortage in the United States tech industry despite claims that more foreign visa workers are needed to fill jobs.
As Google lays off some 12,000 employees across multiple cities in the U.S., Hohn wrote to CEO Sundar Pichai requesting the tech conglomerate cut another nearly 20,000 positions from its payroll and lower salaries.
Hohn’s letter inadvertently admits there is no shortage of tech workers to hire in the U.S. despite industry claims that more foreign visa workers are necessary to fill jobs.
“Over the last five years, Alphabet more than doubled its headcount, adding over 100,000 employees, of which over 30,000 were added in the first nine months of 2022 alone,” Hohn writes:
The decision to cut 12,000 jobs is a step in the right direction, but it does not even reverse the very strong headcount growth of 2022. Ultimately, management will need to go further. [Emphasis added]
I believe that management should aim to reduce headcount to around 150,000, which is in line with Alphabet’s headcount at the end of 2021. This would require a total headcount reduction in the order of 20 percent. [Emphasis added]
Hohn writes that the U.S. tech industry is actually so saturated with available workers for hire that Google can dramatically cut its remaining employees’ salaries without having to worry they will leave for higher-paying jobs.
“Competition for talent in the technology industry has fallen significantly allowing Alphabet to materially reduce compensation per employee,” Hohn writes.
Hohn’s TCI Fund Management holds more than $6 billion in Google stock through the corporation’s parent company, Alphabet Inc.
The labor market for tech workers is partially inflated by a massive pool of foreign visa workers that are imported annually, mostly on H-1B visas, L-1 visas, and OPT visas to take coveted white-collar STEM jobs that would otherwise go to American graduates and professionals.
For instance, in 2021, Google executives sought to outsource more than 9,400 tech jobs to foreign H-1B visa workers — making Google the third largest H-1B outsourcer of American jobs that year, just behind Indian firms Cognizant and Tata Consulting Services.
Today, as tech companies across the U.S. announce layoffs, there are an estimated 80,000 Indian nationals on H-1B visas or L-1 visas who have been fired from their jobs.
Claims from the tech industry have helped drive a push by Republican and Democrat lawmakers in recent years to reward the largest tech conglomerates who have relied on the H-1B visa program to outsource white-collar jobs.
Last year, Reps. Don Bacon (R-NE), Larry Bucshon (R-IN), John Curtis (R-UT), Tom Emmer (R-MN), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Bill Johnson (R-OH), Pete Stauber (R-MN), and William Timmons (R-SC) joined 76 House Democrats to co-sponsor the green card giveaway.
In 2019, Big Tech lobbyists made a huge push to have Republicans join Democrats to help pass a green card giveaway for the industry.
More than 100 House Republicans signed on as co-sponsors that year to promote the green card giveaway, including Reps. Jim Banks (R-IN), Ken Buck (R-CO), Ted Budd (R-NC), Dan Crenshaw, Rodney Davis (R-IL), Lance Gooden (R-TX), Michael Guest (R-MS), Kevin Hern (R-OK), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Scott Perry (R-PA), and Elise Stefanik (R-NY), among others.
Every year, more than half a million American graduates enter the STEM workforce looking for high-paying jobs with good benefits packages. Their chances of landing such a job are cut significantly with the annual inflow of tens of thousands of foreign visa workers who will compete directly against them in the labor market.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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