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alephnerdyesterday at 8:22 PM0 repliesview on HN

There are only ~440,000 Americans employed in computer-related work [0] compared to ~4,000,000 Americans employed in the automotive industry [1], ~1,700,000 Americans in the transportation manufacturing industry [2], and ~500,000 in electronic components manufacturing [3].

More American consumers would be negatively impacted by layoffs in well paid manufacturing industries that are fairly geographically distributed like the automotive industry than an industry that is consolidated in a handful of single party states like the software industry.

More bluntly, SWEs primarily live in single-party states like California, Washington, NY, and Texas; represent a fraction of employees Americans; and work in a politically irrelevant industry (if the tech industry was actually politically powerful the H1B rule would have never been proposed). In essence American SWEs are politically irrelevant and do not matter as they cannot swing elections.

[0] - https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes151299.htm#nat

[1] - https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iagauto.htm#emp_national

[2] - https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag336.htm

[3] - https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag335.htm