International Talent Is Flocking to High-Skill, High-Paying U.S. Jobs

Expect to see a growing diversity of nationalities represented in the tech and industrial areas that offer the most highly-skilled and well-paid positions: New data from job search site Indeed.com indicates that the international searches are landing on a specific type of job.

What’s the Draw?

The positions can be described as “opportunity jobs” and they’re defined as the ones that are paying particularly well. It makes sense that people would be drawn to uproot their lives for a higher payout than they’d otherwise get, and the evidence pulled from international job searches backs up that assumption:

“Indeed’s own research has also found that candidates from outside the US are particularly interested in high-skill jobs. A July 2016 report from the Indeed Hiring Lab, The State of Opportunity, highlights “opportunity jobs” — jobs with high and rising pay. These jobs make up only 16 percent of the labor market, and 92 percent of them are concentrated in just five broad, high-skill employment categories: healthcare practitioners and technical, computer and mathematical, and architecture and engineering, management, and business and financial operations.”

Talent Shortages Are Easier Than Ever to Identify

There are two main reasons behind the international interest: These opportunity positions are hard to automate, and they are currently experiencing a talent shortage. With the help from online job search sites and apps — which are on the rise in 2016 — any job searcher can isolate the highest paying positions. The top countries? The Netherlands, followed by France and Germany.

Even if you’re not internationally located yourself, you can have a fair shot at these opportunity jobs yourself: Just stay proactive in your jobs search, and try a few new tricks to locate the best job openings.

Image: Wikimedia

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Written by:
Adam is a writer at Tech.co and has worked as a tech writer, blogger and copy editor for more than a decade. He was a Forbes Contributor on the publishing industry, for which he was named a Digital Book World 2018 award finalist. His work has appeared in publications including Popular Mechanics and IDG Connect, and his art history book on 1970s sci-fi, 'Worlds Beyond Time,' is out from Abrams Books in July 2023. In the meantime, he's hunting down the latest news on VPNs, POS systems, and the future of tech.
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