Taking the circumstance that a half of STEM university graduates fail to find a job as evidence that there is no &quot;STEM shortage&quot; seems to be based on a misunderstanding about what it means to be qualified for a STEM job, or perhaps the quality of a university education. In CS, at least, which seems to be their go-to example field, my experience is that it is pretty much impossible to fail to graduate due to incompetence - I have seen the system bend over backwards to ensure that people who barely got 40% in a course with plenty of freebies in its marking scheme get passing grades, and the reason given was actually &quot;they want to graduate this year&quot;. Considering also the number of people who flock into the relevant programs hoping for a slice of the startup cake every year, it does not seem at all surprising that half of the US graduates are simply objectively unqualified for any job in the field they graduate in.