The United States General Accounting Office released a study recently on the H-1B program in which it calls for the Department of Homeland Security to implement new measures to integrate visa status data with entry and departure data and to provide clearer guidance on unemployed H-1B workers remaining in the U.S.

In the study, Better Tracking Needed To Help Determine H-1B Program’s Effects on U.S. Workforce, the GAO sought to determine what major occupational categories H-1B beneficiaries were approved to fill, what factors affect employers’ decision-making when hiring, and what the government knows about the entries, departures and status changes of H-1B workers.

Comparing recent data on H-1B beneficiaries to numbers from 2000, the GAO found that fewer visas are being approved for fields directly related to information technology, and instead the H-1B program is helping to fill positions in other areas, such as economics, accounting and biology. Over the last three years, the number of U.S. citizens employed in technology-related fields decreased, along with the number of H-1B petition approvals for these occupations, such as systems analysts and electrical engineers.

H-1B employers interviewed by the GAO said that finding workers with the skills needed in certain science-related occupations remains difficult, despite increases in unemployment. The GAO said the extent to which wage is a factor in hiring H-1B workers is unknown, but employers report recruiting, hiring and retaining employees based on skills needed, rather than the applicant’s citizenship or visa status.

According to the study, the Department of Homeland Security needs to integrate the visa status data in its computer system with other data related to the entry and departure of H-1B visa holders, in order to provide complete data on the effects of the H-1B visa program on the U.S. workforce. As it stands, the DHS does not have data on the number of H-1B workers in the United States at any given time. The Department agreed with the GAO’s recommendations, and new systems are being developed to improve tracking information.