STEM Crisis

The professional electrical engineering society I'm a member of (IEEE) recently published an article looking into the alleged lack of STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) graduates.  I've been suspicious of such claims for some time mainly based on my (and others') experience managing a career in the field. If nothing else, a true lack of STEM workers would result in low unemployment rates and high salaries.  In the dozen years I've been in the field, I have experienced neither.

And now this article gives some research to my intuition and experience.  If you care about such things, I suggest you read the whole article but for those you don't, here are my take-aways.

• Many reports and studies have been done looking into this alleged shortage and each seems to classify STEM differently.  Some include fields like social science, psychologists, and health-care fields.  Some do not.  As you might suspect, this can have a big impact on the results.
• Not all STEM graduates find jobs in STEM fields (mathematicians on Wall Street being a great example) and not all STEM jobs are filled by STEM graduates.  Depending on how each study looks at these details can have a significant impact on determining whether there is a shortage or not.
• Estimating demand in certain fields over many years can be tricky.  The Great Recession has invalidated many studies that assumed more linear growth in the fields over time. As an NSF study says, "Projections of employment growth are plagued by uncertain assumptions and are notoriously difficult to make."
• Immigrant workers (often admitted on the famous H1-B visas) increase the number of STEM workers available for employment.
• Reports from Duke University, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and Rand Corporation all conclude there is no shortage, now or in the near future.
• “If there was really a STEM labor market crisis, you’d be seeing very different behaviors from companies,” notes Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in New York state. “You wouldn’t see companies cutting their retirement contributions, or hiring new workers and giving them worse benefits packages. Instead you would see signing bonuses, you’d see wage increases. You would see these companies really training their incumbent workers. None of those things are observable,” Hira says. “In fact, they’re operating in the opposite way.”

Nice to know I'm not just making this up.