Female CEOs Report Excess Of Tech Jobs

While the unemployment rate is at 8.6 percent, female CEOs from the tech industry reported Monday that there is an excess of unfilled tech jobs.

“The issue that is facing the tech sector is not one of joblessness but one of lack of applicants,” Lisa Hook, president and CEO of Neustar Inc. said at a discussion organized by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) on the state of the American economy. “We are not training our children in STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. That affects not only the growth of our company…but the growth of the tech sector, our world competitiveness and national security.”

Hook continued to relay statistics that if current graduate trends continue, by 2018 there will be 1.4 million computing job openings in the United States and only 29 percent will be filled by US computing graduates. Excess jobs will be filled by foreigners imported to the United States. 

“It is really disappointing for companies like mine, when every single headline is about joblessness, to know that there are actually hundreds of thousands of jobs that are going without being filled or that need to be filled by people we’re bringing into the country,” Hook deplored. 

Hook even joked that she was taking applications in the back of the room.

President and CEO of NAVSYS Corporation Dr. Allison Brown echoed Hook’s words when asked by Rep. Renee Elmers (R-N.C.) how unemployment insurance has affected her company.

“Our folks are the engineers. They’re not unemployed, they just aren’t there,” Brown remarked. “I can’t find enough of them.” 

The panel featured a discussion between Republican women of Congress and six Female CEOs from various industries on the state of the economy and how the Obama administration’s “economic policies and regulations have affected business growth and job creation.”