Pan-Organizational Summit on the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce Meeting Summary (2003) / Chapter Skim
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Is There a Shortage of Scientists and Engineers? How Would We Know?
Is There a Shortage of Scientists and Engineers? How Would We Know?
Pages 167-179
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From page 167... ...
Kelly, Aaron Kofner, Heiga E Rippen Science and Technology Policy Institute RAND This paper has the following objectives: · To clarify the concepts of "shortage" and "low production" in the context of scientists and engineers · To suggest answers to the questions in the paper's title · To point toward strategies for increasing the science and engineering (SHE)
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From page 168... ...
If production of scientists and engineers is insufficient to meet market demand that is, if each new crop of American scientists and engineers is too small to fill the growing number of jobs offered by academic, industrial, and government employers then salary offers will tend to increase and unemployment or underemployment of the S&E workforce will tend to diminish. As young people observe this tightening labor market and consider lifetime employment prospects along with the many other factors influencing their career choice, some of them will opt for S&E, rather than for clinical medicine, law, business, or another profession.
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From page 169... ...
Unfortunately, the uneven detail, varying definitions, and inconsistent time periods in the available data make possible only the teasing out of "stylized facts" hypotheses awaiting empirical testing. That data more recent than 1999 or 2000 are generally not yet published is especially unfortunate, as the S&E workforce situation has arguably changed significantly since then.
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From page 170... ...
That probability for American youth grew from .04 in 1975 to .06 in 1999, a notable increase corresponding to the numerical growth evident in the first two figures. In 1975, this probability in America was exceeded only in Japan, among countries shown.
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From page 171... ...
1O 1 1~1 1975 ·1999 1 . l l 1 _ 1 1 1 1 1 United States United Kingdom France Japan Canada Germany Italy FIGURE 3 Ratio of natural science and engineering first university degrees awarded to 24-year-old population, by G7 country, 1975 and 1990.
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From page 172... ...
6 with earnings of pro5Prevalence of postdoctoral appointments, particularly successive appointments, might be considered an indicator of underemployment. 6These highly aggregated data cannot reveal salary trends for just the S&E workforce, much less for particular disciplines and subdisciplines that may have experienced unusual salary growth or decline.
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From page 173... ...
Unemployment rates are available and plotted in Figure 6 for chemists, recent mathematics 7Called by the Census Bureau "synthetic estimate of work life earnings," this measure calculates for the 1997-99 period the annual earnings of persons in each indicated age range. A young person today might interpret the lines connecting these age points as the expected career profile of annual earnings on into her future.
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From page 174... ...
In a market economy, even one characterized by rigidities, regulations, and unequal opportunity, qualified people tend toward career paths whose rewards and satisfactions are becoming more attractive and/ or whose preparatory costs are becoming less onerous. The American Mathematical Society and American Chemical Association publish more extensive data (including unemployment rates)
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From page 175... ...
Professional association staff in several other sciences informally confirm similar increases. If, as is likely, the variance in time-to-degree has increased along with the mean, then prospective life scientists face not only more years out of the labor market, but also more uncertainty about the number of years.
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From page 176... ...
GENERAL STRATEGIES FOR INCREASING THE SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING WORKFORCE We have seen that the production of American scientists and engineers is not low in the sense that it has fallen over some years from previous heights, nor in the sense that employers are driving S&E earnings up and unemployment rates down in a scramble to hire more. However, in another sense of shortage that of competitive foreign gains American production does appear low.
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From page 177... ...
Often, jobs fallout is a byproduct of policy intentions toward some other goal, but job growth in particular professions can just as well be the explicit policy target. In either case, young people and others in midcareer can be expected to respond.
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From page 178... ...
The rapid growth of industrial parks, corporate-like technical centers, and corporate partnerships would facilitate this arrangement. As with existing professional degree programs, students would not normally rely on grants and fellowships, but would instead look to substantially higher lifetime earnings to pay their own way.
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From page 179... ...
would increasingly do so. REFERENCES American Bar Association.
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