Edited by Victoria Burt
But following
years of rapid growth, the STEM share
of all U.S. employment has dropped to
levels last seen during the mid-90s, according
to a report released by the Commission
on Professionals in Science and
Technology (CPST).
The report finds that since 2001,
STEM professionals have accounted for
a declining share of total employment in
the U.S. The nation’s scientific and technical
workforce is still growing, but it is
now lagging behind the growth of the
U.S. labor force as a whole.
“For years we’ve heard alarm bells
from all sectors about the supply side of
the STEM workforce,” says Lisa Frehill,
executive director of CPST. “This report
calls for a critical shift of our attention
to the demand side of the equation. We must consider why certain occupations
are not faring well domestically and the
impact that might have on the nation’s
long-term economic outlook.”
A white paper, Is U.S. Science and
Technology Adrift?, assesses the present
condition of employment and compensation
in STEM occupations and examines
the status of science in the U.S.
Highlights include:
- In 2006, STEM professionals accounted
for 5% of all employed civilians
in the U.S., down from 5.6% in
both 2000 and 2001.
- Between 1995 and 2002, information
technology employment rose 75%
faster than the rate of job growth for
the general economy, but compensation
for IT workers did not rise much
above the modest improvement of
about 7.7% in real income that all employed
persons received.
- IT jobs account for more than 42% of
all STEM employment, but the 1990s
boom in IT jobs has ended.
- Job growth resumed for mechanical
engineers between 2003 and 2006, but
employment in industrial engineering
continued to decline.
- Within professions tied to the chemical
industry, employment losses continued
between 2003 and 2006. But losses in
compensation declined for chemical
technicians and pay scales improved for
chemists.
- Two larger STEM occupations have
done well in recent years: aerospace engineering
and medical scientists. Both
of these occupations enjoyed aboveaverage
growth in employment between
2003 and 2006.
So is U.S. science and technology
adrift? “Of course it is,” says Richard Ellis,
the report’s author. “Given the decentralized
nature of scientific and technical activity,
public policy does not reflect all the
concerns and issues that matter in maintaining
the general scientific capabilities of
the United States.”
Ellis says there is no shortage of people
interested in STEM fields, but there are few
reasons to believe technical careers will be
worth the investment of time and training.
To attract more participants, “at least two
problems need attention,” he says. “First,
at the very time the nation needs to make
STEM careers more attractive, domestic
job markets are soft because employers are
tapping foreign labor. The second problem
is that the dangers of drift remain. Although
the America Competes Act may
provide some new support for STEM
activities, the legislation doesn’t address
labor-market conditions that are discouraging
participation in U.S. science, and the
actual appropriations or other initiatives
that might be enabled by the act may not
be enough to reverse current trends.”
Steps could be taken to improve the
outlook for U.S. science and technology,
the report notes. The most obvious move
is to address the disconnects in federal
STEM policy, which has yet to come to
grips with issues like offshoring and the
use of guest workers. In addition, STEMwide
initiatives to raise the visibility and
influence of scientific and technical professions
are recommended.
Is U.S. Science and Technology Adrift?
is available free of charge on CPST’s Web
site, cpst.org, as are earlier reports and
white papers.