Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The Myth of STEM Labor Shortages

http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2701
The Myth of STEM Labor Shortages
By Jay Schalin
Pope Center for Higher Education Policy
May 31, 2012

Everybody knows that the best way to get ahead today is to get a college degree. Even better is to major in one of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subjects, where the bulk of the jobs of the present and future lie. Politicians, business leaders, and academics all herald the high demand for scientists and engineers.

But they are, for the most part, wrong. The real facts suggest that, in many STEM specialties, there is a labor glut, not a shortage.

That is not to say that the STEM subjects aren’t worthy of study—there are many reasons to do so. And if a talented young person really wants a job in a STEM field, he or she can eventually get one, with a little perseverance.

But there is no urgent need for STEM graduates, at least not in a general sense.

The roots of STEM labor gluts go back over half a century, according to Michael Teitelbaum, a demographer at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and a leading authority on this topic. Sputnik, the 1957 Soviet missile launch, created a national concern that we were falling behind in the race for technical superiority. Talk of labor shortages in science and engineering arose, and talk led to action. Beryl Lieff Benderly, a journalist who writes about employment for scientists for Science magazine and other publications, described the result of the national response to Sputnik: “Federal money swiftly poured into science and engineering scholarships and so successfully attracted students that, by the early 1970s, the market for young scientists was flooded.”

The flood grew in the 1980s, after the National Science Foundation (NSF) warned of imminent shortages of scientists. Eventually, the NSF’s predictions turned out to be so off-base that the agency was subjected to an investigation by a House subcommittee in 1995, during which NSF director Neal Lane flatly stated, “there really was no basis to predict a shortage,” according to Teitelbaum and Benderly. (Lane was not involved with the NSF at the time of shortage prediction).

More recently, a PhD. in electrical engineering who follows labor trends in his specialty, Dan Donahoe, wrote for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) magazine that there has been a “myth of a qualified labor shortage” in his field for a long time. He says that the myth started in the late 1980s, and that the myth continues despite expansion and contraction of the labor market.

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There is demand for certain subsets of STEM majors, for example petroleum engineers, as the article mentions, and one should look at starting salaries to identify those majors. But the notion of a general STEM shortage is a myth.

I think they should just say there is a TE shortage.. technology and engineering. I am constantly getting calls from recruiting companies asking if I know any other engineers that work in the same field that are looking for work.. the answer is always 'no'.

I can't remember a time when people with PhDs in biology (my field) weren't complaining about how hard it is to get a permanent position. Everybody gets postdoc positions that are on soft money.

If you look at the data and apply faulty logic, then you come up with faulty conclusions.

For example:


Just because an American IT professional lost his job at a dot-com doesn't mean he's a candidate for a job at Microsoft. Nearly 2/3rds of all websites are built on a variant of Unix.

http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/operating_system/all

This is like saying there can't be a shortage of cardiac surgeons, because there have been major job losses among pediatricians.


Sorry, this is just absurd. Since when does a college student have their finger on the pulse of their chosen industry? They're KIDS. They have no practical experience to draw on, so all they can go on is hearsay and media reports. What was the media saying about the IT job market from 2001-2005?

If students had access to hard info about their chosen professional job market, things like this wouldn't happen: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44393771/ns/us_news-life/t/culinary-school-grads-claim-they-were-ripped/


ROFL. What's even funnier is that if you click on the author's name, you'll find that he was briefly a software engineer at CSC.

Here are just a few fast-evolving technologies that will require lots of software development:

- Tablets/smart phones - this is a relatively new technology that is still evolving from a hardware perspective, which naturally leads to ongoing software changes. As these are now in the hands of nearly everyone, new ways to exploit them are coming about.

- Web services - A major change to how large enterprises integrate disparate systems, evolving since approx. 2001, but change comes slowly in the enterprise arena.

- Remember all those really cool sci-fi movies where the computer is operated by hand gestures? The device is nearly here, and the driver is open source, so all it needs is exploitation: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57437404-76/leap-motion-3d-hands-free-motion-control-unbound/

Dude has pretty much said it all. I am too busy to comment as I have to hire five more people this week for IT jobs.

I certainly wasn't really worried about getting a job in chemical engineering when I graduated.

And I know of no engineer who is worried about their job, friends or family.

Everything seems fine in STEM world, from what I've seen and heard.

Even a guy I know from college who keeps ending up in the psych ward is having no problem finding new IT jobs when he gets released.

I agree that the job market for the "T" in STEM is good, but that is distinct from the academic job market for PhDs in the natural sciences, as others have noted.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303360504577408431211035166.html
Revenge of the Nerds: Tech Firms Scour College Campuses for Talent
Wall Street Journal
May 31, 2012, 2:21 p.m. ET

...

The technology boom has created an acute shortage of engineers and software developers. The industry has responded by taking a page from the playbook of professional sports: identify up and comers early, then roll out the red carpet to lock them up.

With the social media frenzy in full swing, promising students are now wrestling with decisions about whether to stay in school or turn pro. Meanwhile, those who stay on campus are enjoying a bonanza of free food and other goodies as companies rush to win their hearts and minds.

...

Starting salaries at leading companies for average computer science grads from top schools range from $75,000 to $100,000, plus signing and relocation bonuses worth $5,000 to $15,000, according to venture capitalists and recruiters. New hires may also get small equity grants, with stars getting additional cash bonuses or larger grants worth as much as 1% of the company.

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Obviously your local market plays into it, too. I too live in "hurricane alley," and my employer is having a devil of a time filling certain positions. I was surprised about how quickly I was hired, until I found out the position had been open for more than a year before I'd made myself available for it.

We recently went through a major corporate event that transformed the IT workforce (some new positions, some drastically changed positions, some eliminated positions, etc.). I don't have personal knowledge of any of my colleagues who moved out of the organization (willingly or otherwise) who didn't land on their feet immediately with a new employer.

Oh, and as a footnote to my previous post, I failed to mention information security, because each time some new technology or service is tied to public networks, that's a new threat vector.

And the reason why that article in the original post was such a failure is because it spent most of its time on the "T" in STEM as evidence for the alleged myth.

I would say that the higher up the STEM ladder you get, no matter what field, the less this shortage is apparent. The greatest pain is being felt at the lowest layers. Think about what has happened in manufacturing... workers are now expected to operate increasingly complicated robotic machinery, and produce work of increasing complexity to increasingly fine tolerances. Your average assembly-line worker needs technology knowledge far greater than he did in the past.

And here's where we see the real problem... all these manufacturing jobs still pay like traditional assembly work, despite requiring costly higher education that the worker is forced to obtain on his own. And so... H-1B.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...t-there/2012/07/07/gJQAZJpQUW_story.html
U.S. pushes for more scientists, but the jobs aren’t there
By Brian Vastag
Washington Post
July 7, 2012

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There are too many laboratory scientists for too few jobs.

That reality runs counter to messages sent by President Obama and the National Science Foundation and other influential groups, who in recent years have called for U.S. universities to churn out more scientists.

Obama has made science education a priority, launching a White House science fair to get young people interested in the field.

But it’s questionable whether those youths will be able to find work when they get a PhD. Although jobs in some high-tech areas, especially computer and petroleum engineering, seem to be booming, the market is much tighter for lab-bound scientists — those seeking new discoveries in biology, chemistry and medicine.

“There have been many predictions of [science] labor shortages and . . . robust job growth,” said Jim Austin, editor of the online magazine ScienceCareers. “And yet, it seems awfully hard for people to find a job. Anyone who goes into science expecting employers to clamor for their services will be deeply disappointed.”

One big driver of that trend: Traditional academic jobs are scarcer than ever. Once a primary career path, only 14 percent of those with a PhD in biology and the life sciences now land a coveted academic position within five years, according to a 2009 NSF survey. That figure has been steadily declining since the 1970s, said Paula Stephan, an economist at Georgia State University who studies the scientific workforce. The reason: The supply of scientists has grown far faster than the number of academic positions.

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I started my PhD almost 20 years ago, and even then, people would say things like "Joey found a permanent position" as though Joey had won the lottery. I don't know why they keep pushing the idea that we need more scientists.

It's not just finding a job that's difficult. Once someone gets an academic position, he has to start writing grant applications. Many of NIH programs fund ~10-15% of their applications. It's even harder than that if you're a new investigator. And don't even get me started about how conservative they are. The joke among scientists is that you have to have done the work before they'll fund it. Back in the 70s, they funded around a third of their applications.

Part of the problem can be blamed on the government for not putting enough into research, but IMO, the more serious problem is that when the NIH budget doubled in the 90s, the universities responded with building and hiring sprees. IMO, the federal government also allows too much in indirect costs (50% or more of a grant).

Oh. That's a joke?

Huh. I had no idea.


Yeah-- what Val said.

If scientists spend a decade after their PhDs earning $40K a year in five jobs that last 2 years each, that may be good for society, if those scientists do important research. It stinks for the scientists themselves, of course. I started this thread because I don't want young people to be deceived.

Perhaps I should have said, "Bitter, mirthless joke."


How is it good for society? Most of them end up working outside their fields, which is a huge waste of their education. Worse, postdocs are only semi-independent and generally have to stick to areas that their bosses are interested in. This approach stifles innovative research by relative newcomers and discourages the truly risky work that fails much of the time but yields the critical breakthroughs that are essential for true scientific progress.

A bit OT, but the whole publish-or-perish and get-grants-or-perish system discourages risky work. Risky work takes time: you can't publish three papers a year if you're doing something that takes five to seven years to develop. You will never get tenure if you are five years in and haven't published a single paper.

Academic science in the US (and elsewhere) is currently focused almost exclusively on incremental work (with no guarantees that the increments are meaningful). In the past, there was a balance between the quirky visionary types and the people who could take a good theory, crank through it and develop it well. Not these days: quirky types who take a while to develop an offbeat idea aren't really part of universities now. They can't compete with the incremental types when judged with today's industrial metrics of science: impact factors, number of citations per paper, number of annual publications, etc.

If your grant application isn't highly likely to generate two to three papers in three years, you won't get funded. Again, this shuts out risky science, keeps those postdocs cranking out data, and ensures that science is incremental.

Part IV of The Trouble with Physics makes this point very eloquently.

This is absurdly misleading, due to sample size. The article takes a very small portion of the overall STEM workforce and acts as if it represents the larger whole.

1) What percentage of STEM workers pursue and attain a PhD?
2) Of those, what percentage are in these "lab-bound" roles discussed?

Well, it's hardly irrelevent or misleading to people who are interested in pursuing terminal degrees in those disciplines.

Which, by the way, fuel the "T" in STEM; without basic research (the incremental or quirky sort) there is little scientific innovation to become technology.

I think that one component of this discussion not yet mentioned-- and perhaps largely invisible to most people, both in and out of the STEM occupations is that there has been a shift over the past 30 years in how research is funded.

Yes, government granting has always funded, and continues to fund, what it sees as "basic" (as opposed to 'applied') research. The understanding being that 'applied' research has generally got commercial applications which are obvious (at least to the people who are making decisions it should be) and will have commercial/financial incentives to drive them. So there was, up until the late 1990's, a gentleman's agreement of sorts that understood that there was this firewall between the academy and the military/govt. and private industry. Most people in science stayed (for their careers) on one side or the other-- and this is still mostly true, at least in those classic "lab" (ha ha... how quaint, by the way) disciplines.

The problem here is exactly the same one driving very high rates of unemployment in recent college grads. Companies have shifted costs away from themselves to such a degree that they are not INTERESTED in doing "science" research anymore. Only development of already-fairly mature science. They don't want "unskilled" workers, and they don't want "immature" scientific/technological ideas, either. Both cost too much in up-front spending and don't pay off immediately, or predictably in the short term.

Where does that science come from, though?

Oh, well, there is no longer much funding for THAT. Because in the academy, there is no longer so much funding for it, either. And it's not just in one discipline or field. This is speaking across molecular biology, pharm/tox, analytical instrumentation, materials development, and the like, with which my DH and I have personal, relevent experience. My DH and I have both seen this evolution happen, since we were in the right places (and disciplines) at the right times.

Pharmaceutical companies have got very little in the pipeline for antibiotic resistance or vaccine technology improvements. Frighteningly little, in fact. Why? Because it doesn't pay off right away. Why pay for that when someone else WILL? Oh-- well, surely there are ideas coming out in publications from the Academy that will allow for cherry-picking of new ideas, right? (Well, for a while, anyway... this was the idea behind the academic push toward "technology transfer" initiatives in the past ten years, too, by the way. It was about MONEY; more specifically what made the quickest bucks.)

Corporate ways of forcing profit leveraging into how science is conducted are at the bottom of at least some of this. It's a 'next quarter' or 'this biennium' outlook in an area that requires MUCH more long-range thinking.

We do need more people in science. But, um, we aren't going to actually have jobs for them, since it doesn't "pay" to do science. Even though we need it. Er-- or will when the well runs dry for Tech in about ten to twenty years.

JMO, of course-- but one shared by a fair number of other terminally-degreed scientists that I know. Are we just bitter? Oh, I don't think so. We're by and large a group of HG+ people. We're concerned as much for the future as we are for our own hides.

The unemployment rate was 4.7% as recently as November 2007 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000 , so a long-term shift in corporate attitudes is unlikely to be the main reason for high current unemployment.

Arguably the most famous corporate research lab, Bell Labs, was funded by AT&T when it had an effective monopoly on phone service. When companies are in a more competitive environment, which I think is better overall for the nation's standard of living (remember when long-distance phone calls cost serious money?), they have less freedom to make investments in fundamental research that have negative expected value for their shareholders.

Unemployment is actually pretty low right now considering that we just recently went through creating history's largest ever (fraud-saturated) credit bubble.

Bostonian, sorry-- my statement was reflecting the high rates of unemployment in those with (recent)college degrees but who lack work experience, and yes, there does seem to be a similar cost-shifting trend behind it.

Applicants are expected to already have the skills necessary to peform any job that they are applying for. Not the "potential" for them. Employers expect previous training to have taken care of those up-front investments in time and money.

Similar driving force behind it, I suspect. Which is in line (entirely) with your second statement.

The era of industrial R&D as it existed in the 1960's-1980's is completely long-gone. (As my DH could tell you with a great deal of cynicism, by the way, as he works for one of the companies that was once a powerhouse there and now cares only about the quickest route to a quick buck or protectable intellectual property.)

That same driving force is present in modern pharmaceutical
R&D; a quick examination of patent patterns there reveals this. Why go to the trouble of screening an entire library of compounds when you can just do a single tweak of a fully-characterized compound and have another five or ten years of patent on it?

Which is a disaster for gifties and any others who thrive on learning.

I suppose the short-term gain is that you get someone who can "hit the ground running." But I suspect that there's a moderate or long-term loss when people get bored and move on. There's probably also a hidden cost of reduced enthusiasm for work.

Given the current corporate culture at the most senior management levels, who cares about the long term? The days of running a company for 30 years and handing it down to family are over. Today it's all about inflating stock values through any methods necessary, then cashing out options before the inevitable fall. Why work for 30 years when you can get the same amount in 5?

It's worth noting here that Bell Labs' biggest customer was the US government, because someone has to have both the means and the will to bet big on new ideas. Nowadays, nobody has the means or will... hence the decay of research-based science.

According to Wikipedia, Bell Labs was originally created with the funds received from a French government prize.

All good points. Its taken me years to get my firm to hire people with little experience then make the investment to bring them up to speed. I've seen that this approach takes more time, but you end up with a much better, highly loyal, and less expensive work force.

The focus is on the short term rather than the long term. The older I get the more I see that this is a function of the generation born in the 40s-60s. Its all about ME and RIGHT NOW rather than what is best for all and in the long run.

It takes 5-8 years to come up with truly original ideas and then to bring them to fruition. Given that the average tenure at CFO/CEO is 5 years, that leaves little room for the long view.

This is one reason why private equity is making a comeback.

It took the founders of Instagram less than two years to get a $1 billion bid from Facebook http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram . Whether Instagram's product is "truly original" is arguable, but when people see wealth created so quickly, time horizons may be shortened. In general, someone with a very good idea can monetize it faster than 5-8 years , which is a good thing IMO.

Boomers are individualistic.

Technically, they are individual-spiritual in generational orientation.

It seems to be related to the credit-innovation waves.

It goes away when they go away.

I suppose it's good if your definition of "a good thing" is revolves around making money quickly. Though I don't agree with your "in general" statement. Rapid monetization applies to ideas that can be rapidly developed. Some things, like new theories about gravitation, don't fit that model.

IMO, when profit becomes the primary focus, all kinds of problems develop: the focus shifts to stuff that can get done quickly, quality tends to decline, and more meaningful longer-term projects don't get attention. It's given us a Twitagram A.D.D. society.

To me, focusing on trivial stuff that generates PROFITS FAST is kind of like going through life eating mostly dessert. It's great for a while, but eventually, things in your body will start to fall apart due to lack of nutrients.

Academia has this problem just as badly as industry, with funded grants (and the indirect costs they provide) being the rapid payoff.

Yes, and the pace of that transformation seems to be accelerating. Fewer and fewer R01's for research that "might" pay off and is based on daring or off-beat insights or hypotheses based on natural correlations, and more and more for publishing preliminary research that merely requires a few 'increases of n' to turn it into a couple of papers in second-rate journals that few people outside the niche are ever going to care about... Yuck.

There isn't a way to develop a new drug from start to finish in less than the pace of clinical studies. There is no short cut. There isn't a way to evaluate safety without using live organisms, and that takes TIME.

Therefore, the only end-run around that is to NOT take risks on truly novel pharmacology, because at least if you go with a known winner, you know that the payoff is much likelier to be there in the end. I give you "Xyzal." :sigh:

This fools many people who don't know much chemistry or biology, of course. It's certainly eligible for its own patent.

The problem is that antimicrobial agents in the "same drug class" tend to not necessarily work any better than anything else in that drug class, and eventually we discover that the opposition has been developing better technology while we've been tinkering with the firing pan on our muskets, over here, and granting patents for different trigger designs. So while Xyzal may fool people, an antibiotic clone isn't going to fool a resistant organism that doesn't read DTC advertising.

Really remarkable innovation takes time, and is often serendipitous to begin with, meaning that the target activity had no real intent to make the discovery to begin with. The sheer scale of the spin-off technologies that came out of government-sponsored programs run by the national laboratories and NASA is mind-boggling, and I find it horrifying to imagine that all of that is ending in my lifetime because of such short-sightedness.

The free-market theory is simply not a good model for everything. Yes, I'm well aware that this is an opinion. But human history seems to back this idea. Civilizations that value innovation for its own sake survive longer because they seem to have a greater variety of sources to draw from when facing challenges. The platform is already built, basically, even though there wasn't a reason to build one, therefore it's easier to build atop that platform more rapidly when need arises.

Agreed; I am so fed up with hearing funders (VCs, Pharma, etc) announce that they won't fund something unless it's ready for Phase II. Argh.


It's my opinion too. Free markets work well some things, but there are times when basing things on profits just don't work well. Basic research is one of them.

Austin, kudos to you for convincing your employer to invest in talent and potential over criteria! How did you do it?