U.S. attracting fewer educated, highly skilled migrants, report says
The U.S. economy has long been powered in part by the nation's ability to attract the world's most educated and skilled people to its shores.
But a new study of the worldwide migration of professionals to the U.S. shows a sharp drop-off in its proportional share of those workers -- raising the question of whether the nation will remain competitive in attracting top talent in an increasingly globalized economy.
The study, which used a novel method of tracking people through data from the social media site LinkedIn, is believed to be the first to monitor global migrations of professionals to the U.S., said co-author Emilio Zagheni, a University of Washington assistant professor of sociology and fellow of the UW eScience Institute. "This is the first time a worldwide data set has been used to answer this question," he said. "That hasn't been done before."
The study, which was presented at the recent SocInfo conference in Barcelona, Spain, found that:
While 27 percent of migrating professionals among the sample group chose the U.S. as a destination in 2000, in 2012 just 13 percent did.
The decline was seen across professionals with bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees.
The biggest drop was among those in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, from 37 to 15 percent.
Asian countries saw the highest increase in professional migrants worldwide, attracting a cumulative 26 percent in 2012, compared with just 10 percent in 2000.
Australia, Oceania, Africa and Latin America also saw an uptick in their share of the world's professional migration flows.
The U.S. attracted 24 percent of graduates from the top 500 universities worldwide in 2000, but just 12 percent in 2012.
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U.S. attracting fewer educated, highly skilled migrants, report says