1/ Stuart Anderson from @NFAPResearch is at it again with his deceptive analysis. In his recent article in @Forbes, using cherry-picked data, he argues that the unemployment rate is low in the Tech sector & therefore the Trump Admin should refrain from suspending H-1B visas. 
2/ He pulls the unemployment rate in Computer Occupations for the month of January 2020 (3.0%), & then compares it to the month of April 2020 (2.8%). Because the UR dropped 0.2%, he concludes UR is low in the Tech sector & H-1B visas shouldn't be suspended. A deceptive analysis.
3/ What Stuart did here is purposefully cherry-pick to find a month before April 2020 where the UR was HIGHER relative to April 2020's UR so he could make the assertion that UR is indeed falling for Computer Programming occupations. Notice that he fails to include what...
4/...happened in the months of February & March prior to the April 2020 UR number. We tried to replicate his analysis & what we found was that for the month of February & March (2020), the UR dropped even lower than the month of January (2020), & then shot back up in April (2020)
5/ In other words, the UR is trending *upwards* once you factor in what happened in the preceding months of February & March (2020). Also worth pointing out that the reason why our UR numbers are different than Stuart's is because he added *Managers* to his Computer Occ. dataset.
6/ If you remove the Managers occupation, it tells a very different story. It would make perfect sense because non-manager workers would be the first workers to be laid off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, & most *NEW* H-1B visas issued are for non-managerial roles.
7/ Furthermore, if you compare the aggregate UR numbers in 2019 relative to the months of Jan-Apr 2020, one can clearly see that the UR is significantly trending *upwards*. In short, UR is indeed climbing for Computer Programming roles, & it makes no sense to bring in NEW H-1Bs.
8/ Last thing worth mentioning, even if we were to assume that the UR numbers remain low for Computer Programming occupations during this economic crisis, what companies are doing is laying off their full time American workers & replacing them with cheaper H-1Bs to save on costs.
