The U.S. information technology sector (computer design, software, AI, etc.) is a major force in the world. When one compares its IT workforce with those of other countries, the role of foreign-born workers stick out.

The United States has 30% – 50% more software engineers per total workforce than does Japan. This is despite the relatively high penetration of numeracy and adaptive skills in Japan compared to other countries (go here).

One major factor behind the U.S. lead is the very high level of foreign-born information technology workers in the United States. The U.S. greatly depends on foreign-born IT workers. 39% of its software engineers are foreign born, compared to 4% in Japan. Japan depends are less on foreign workers throughout its economy than does the U.S (about 3% vs 19%).

For context, the U.S.’ use of foreign-born for software engineering (39%) is much higher than in the U.K. (18%).  There are roughly one million foreign-born software engineers in the U.S. How do they get here?  Among the roughly 700,000 H1-B workers. About half, or 350,000 pf them are software engineers. As I’ve posted before, there is a transnational IT workforce in the U.S. and India. This means that besides having a relatively lot more software engineers compared to Japan, the U.S. has a distinct advantage of being more able to draw easily upon a major supplier of software engineers in the world – India. Language barriers alone create a big barrier for Japan to beef up its software engineering workforce.