NPR - Lost in the space where there should be knowledge

Driving home from a meeting and listening to the increasingly inexcusable NPR.  Their headline story was the Silicon Valley layoffs.  NPR was focused on the impact on H1b visa holders.

And to be fair to NPR, it is quite an issue.  If you are H1b visa holder, you only have 60 days to find an alternate employer.  Since a good number of H1b holders have family over here with them, there is a lot on the line.  You have to find another job (hard when the whole sector is contracting), quickly, and if unable to do so, it affects multiple people in an expensive fashion.

On the other hand, while the H1b visa has been a boon for the sector by cheaply increasing the volume of technical talent, it has also been very beneficial to the visa recipients.  It is just risky but in known ways and now the risk side of the benefit equation is raising its head.

But I am curious.  What percentage of Silicon Valley tech labor force is actually H1b?  It appears that it is perhaps 20%.  Are the layoffs especially concentrated among H1b holders?  The NPR reporter does not report the 20% number, nor does she make the claim that it is concentrated among the H1b holders even though that is the presumption of the headline.  

I am thinking that while it is unfortunate for the H1b holders, the whole program might be beneficial to American tech employees.  FAANG companies used to H1b to keep tech salaries lower in the boom times, but now there is potentially a symmetric benefit to American employees if the employment cuts are made among the H1b holders.  The hypothesis might be that Americans got paid less because of H1b employees but they gained job security instead, assuming H1b employees are the first to go when employment contracts.

But NPR does not make that case at all.

Indeed, towards the end of the piece the "reporter", in passing, mentions that most the cuts among the FAANG companies are in HR and Recruiting.

What?

Tech skills tend to be fast evolving, specialized, not particularly fungible and high value.  That's why we had H1b to increase the tech talent pool (to drive down salaries and increase talent supply.)

HR and Recruiting skills tend to be stable, generic, fungible and lower value.  They are not in short supply.  

I am sure that there are likely some H1b holders in HR and Recruiting but that is not what is usually covered by those type of visas.  Techies are what is covered by H1b.

On the one hand, if the cutbacks are in HR and Recruiting, then there isn't an H1b story.  If there is an H1b story then the cutbacks aren't in HR and Recruiting.

NPR.  Lost in the story for lack of knowledge.  They don't seem to know what they are talking about.