Commentary: The NSA Leaker And Highly Skilled But Academically Ordinary Workers

Booz Allen Hamilton has released a new statement on Edward Snowden, its now-former employee and National Security Agency surveillance leaker. In addition to saying it fired Snowden yesterday over code-of-ethics violations, Booz Allen reports that the Maryland native's annual salary was $122,000—far less than the $200,000 Snowden himself claimed to be making.

That's still a lot of money, particularly for someone who reportedly never graduated from high school. 

But the reality is, Snowden is part of a larger economy that tech companies and members of Congress ignore when they discuss high-skilled jobs and immigration. As more of the broader economy moves toward an IT-reliant future, many of the job market's more mundane openings are also falling into the science, technology, math, and engineering categories. [...]