Employment issues

A letter by Robert Butler laments that he could find no available jobs, despite his being eminently qualified and living in the vicinity of thousands of potential employers (New Jersey) (C&EN, Nov. 7, 2005, page 4). I have been reading letters like this in C&EN for 30 years. In the same issue, the employment situation for chemists is described as "sluggish."

No doubt in the very near future, we will see an article in which industry is demanding that Congress make hundreds of thousands of H1-B visas available for foreign workers to fill the jobs that would otherwise go begging. They will make it sound as if the chemical industry will collapse if this is not granted to them. After all, it works for Bill Gates.

Thomas Kottke
Kernersville, N.C.