The Accelerating Decline in America's High-Skilled Workforce

Kirkegaard explores the increasingly dysfunctional state of present US high-skilled immigration laws and recommends a coherent set of immediate reforms, which should aim to facilitate continuously high and increasingly economically necessary levels of high-skilled immigration to the United States. In recent decades American skill levels have stagnated and struggled to make the global top 10. As baby boomers retire, the United States risks losing these skills altogether. In response, the United States should address high-skilled immigration in its broader foreign economic policies in an attempt to remain a global leader in the face of accelerating global economic integration.

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, senior fellow, has been associated with the Institute since 2002. Before joining the Institute, he worked with the Danish Ministry of Defense, the United Nations in Iraq, and in the private financial sector. He is a graduate of the Danish Army's Special School of Intelligence and Linguistics with the rank of first lieutenant; the University of Aarhus in Aarhus, Denmark; the Columbia University in New York; and received his Ph.D from Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies. He is coeditor of Transatlantic Economic Challenges in an Era of Growing Multipolarity (2012), coauthor of US Pension Reform: Lessons from Other Countries (2009) and Transforming the European Economy (2004), and assisted with Accelerating the Globalization of America: The Role for Information Technology (2006).