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Human Factors Specialists'Education and Utilization Results of a Survey (1992) / Chapter Skim
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5 Supply and Demand of Human Factors Specialists
Pages 70-76

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From page 70...
... While projected growth in demand is, in fact, greatest in the military aerospace domain, the demand projected for human factors specialists in other areas of activity is significant as well. SUPPLY We define supply in terms of the number of people currently working in the human factors field and the number of people expected to be available in the near future.
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From page 71...
... On one hand, these numbers are not quite an estimate of supply because they are driven, in part, by available jobs; and, as was indicated earlier, nearly 37 percent of those represented in the survey moved from a job not primarily involving human factors to one that did. These are likely to be people who did not obtain their training in formal human factors graduate programs.
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From page 72...
... Some come from the recognized human factors graduate programs. Our survey revealed that the 49 responding programs graduated an estimated total of 245 with master's degrees and 127 with doctorates in 1988-1989, for a total of 372.
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From page 73...
... This may imply a peaking of demand in two years and then a plateau between three and five years; however, one cannot be sure, in part because respondents gave predictions for the five-year time frame only if they had forecast a need for additional personnel in the next two years. The major growth areas, as expected, are aerospace and computers; these areas are projecting growth that will further distort their proportions in the overall mix of technical specialties utilizing human factors specialists.
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From page 74...
... " and "Could your unit generate additional projects if you had additional human factors personnel? If so, how many could you use?
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From page 75...
... This was well before the series of events in Eastern Europe and the Middle East that have significantly changed the military equation and probably should lead us to revise our overall estimates of demand for human factors specialties in aerospace and other specialties that have an emphasis on military work. We attempted to determine if there were any specific kinds of work that seemed to be stimulating new hires disproportionately.
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From page 76...
... The supervisors uniformly predicted continued growth in the field, but they were more optimistic over a two-year than a five-year time frame. Finally, there appears to be very great elasticity in demand if the funding for human factors work was to be increased.
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