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Science and Engineering Workforce Has Stalled In the US
dcblogs writes "The science and engineering workforce in the U.S. has flatlined, according to the Population Reference Bureau. As a percentage of the total labor force, S&E workers accounted for 4.9% of the workforce in 2010, a slight decline from the three previous years when these workers accounted for 5% of the workforce. That percentage has been essentially flat for the past decade. In 2000, it stood at 5.3%. The reasons for this trend aren't clear, but one factor may be retirements. S&E workers who are 55 and older accounted for 13% of this workforce in 2005; they accounted for 18% in 2010. 'This might imply that there aren't enough young people entering the S&E labor force,' said one research analyst."
2000: Y2K temp laborforce
present day: workforce is rather flat, like the economy as a whole
Arrr, a shit storms a brewin!
The more that business sends that kind of work offshore, the less interested people will be in having the rug pulled out from under them in the Holy and Unquestionable name of Global Competitiveness.
You want to get people interested in science & engineering? Kill all the guest worker programs, prioritize citizens over internationals for university slots, and start working with business to guarantee long-term work to attract people back.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
So, after a lifetime of watching older members of the science and engineering community get outsourced, downsized, run ragged, and generally mistreated by their employers, young people don't want to sign up for the same thing?
Good for them. Maybe the kids today are smarter than we thought.
--saint
Why would young people enter science and engineering when they can go into management and finance? Then they can take the credit and pay that would have been taken from them if they had gone into STEM.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What they should say is that there aren't enough people willing to work very hard for a an ever shrinking piece of the pie. What do they expect researchers to do when they keep cutting basic science funding? The numbers are terrible right now. Something like 10% of those with new Phd's that apply for a grant actually get it. Who in their right mind would get a Phd for a 10% chance of getting funding? They apparently expect Phd's to be happy to work indefinitely as a post-doc for 30K a year. This trend is very similar for recent engineering graduates.
Could it be that there's more money and less stress in going into a different career than science/engineering? Who would have thought?
Who wants to go into science and engineering these days after 25%-30% of the manufacturing-related jobs migrated offshore in the past decade?
Why would today's youngsters want to go into yet another field that will eventually be outsourced to India, China, Vietnam, etc.?
Maybe if donations to universities went to beefing up outdated science & engineering departments instead of athletes, it might "trickle up" to the real world. But that's just crazy.
I majored in a hard science and apart from a brief job that ran out I can't find anything in my field for my experience.
Everyone wants these non existent fuckers with 15 years experience or whatever but everyone is retiring. So its not the fault of young people, its shitty employers who arent hiring new blood and training them.
Show me any music or podcast that a iPod can't play easier than a PC Computer?
We don't need PC Computers and Internet anymore. Yall better get girlfriends.
The data might not mean there is an outright shortage of S&E workers; it could indicate a combination of factors related to such things as the recession and offshoring.
This suprises anyone?
As a young engineer myself, the good part of the story is that there will be more promotion possibilities because the older workers are retiring. The bad part is that the reason for the decline is the loss of job security and pay that barely pays the school loans and isn't matching inflation most times makes S&E a somewhat risky career path.
Isn't it due to many universities rapidly turning into high priced trade schools?
It's funny reading all the responses saying "It's obvious"... and then each response gives a different cause.
If I knew then what I know now, I would probably not have gone into electrical engineering out of fear of offshoring. Thus far it hasn't completed killed engineering in the USA, but it has certainly made a big dent. But I don't know that the majority of young engineers know to even fear that...
Marc
-- PGP keyID: 0x4C95994D
Sorry, you missed it by one minute. Anyway, first post doesn't count unless you say something meaningful.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
[sarcasm]Meanwhile, quants working on Wall Street to separate investors from their 401(k) funds have grown by 20%.[/sarcasm]
Seriously, look at the number of engineering grads going to work on Wall Street vs. actual engineering companies. You might be surprised.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
This is odd from my perspective since 1/6 of new freshmen at my university declare mechanical engineering, never mind the other engineering majors available. And this is at a school where humanities and business are big.
Sorry, you missed it by one minute. Anyway, first post doesn't count unless you say something meaningful.
And if you DO get first post with something meaningful, you're probably a shill and don't count anyway. Enjoy your accomplishment when you get it!
Why would people stay in a field with NO JOBS. I once met a Chem. Eng. working as a janitor at a Walmart. As far as S&E goes USA is a has been.
I blame education for this.
One one hand you tell students they will be sucessful if they get a college degree (any college degree).
On the other hand you have colleges marketing easy-and-fun degree programs with very low market demand for those degrees.
The net result is a crop of students with a pile of debt and a Masters degree in Basket-Weaving which isn't necessary in the real world.
Isn't this inherently what happens with higher technology? As technology increases, you can get more done with fewer man-hours of labor (e.g., concentrating IT in cloud-like service centers and so forth). It's not like we're socialists who use this to give everyone a dividend in more pay, or less hours per week. Instead, we hire fewer people, and the business world considers that to be a good thing.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I typically get the feeling the young are stuck between a rock and a hard place for STEM careers. On the one hand we are told over and over that these are important jobs. But then when you go to apply for them, you are told you are too young and need more experience and can't hire you. "Well, can you train me?" "No, you just have to get experience, or go back to school." So you go back to school, and they tell you "Well we don't do job training, our focus is how to *think* and learn the principles needed. Go get a job if you want experience." And so you end up in a bizarre catch-22 where everyone expects you to know everything at a young age, but no one is willing to provide the training you need to get there. It's as if they think scientists grow on trees and you just wait for them to ripen and apply for a job, with their analytical skills and knowledge fully formed. Maybe that was possible in some sense during the baby boom, when it was also more patriotic to go into a STEM field to fight the commies, but today you have to work for it and provide incentives. There are less people for each job, not more.
Either these are important jobs employers need to support more (with leniency on the expectations of youth, pair them up with an older mentor, on-job training, etc), or they aren't. Suck it up and pay for it instead of whining. But I am tired of the limbo these fields leave many younger people floating in.
That is the most bizarre set of stats i've ever read....
I cant understand why they would think the PERCENTAGE of the workforce for s&e would be on the increase? That just baffles me.
Its like, checkout people, the number you have is dependent on the number of retail places around, which is dependant on the population, and hence its probably always going to be relatively fixed (as a percentage). At the moment, that might be on the decrease cause of automated human-less checkouts, but the driving force behind checkout people is the size of your population.
I cant think of anything in the last decade that would propel more ppl (as a percentage) to enter either science or engineering. Any factor that might cause it is probably going to be offset by something else, ultimately if everyone started getting into science and engineering, who's gunna be a doctor, a lawyer, a politician, etc etc.
How that even begins to relate to "less innovation" baffles me even more because 5% of the population is a considerable number of people and innovation itself tends to be sporadic and driven by individuals (and then implemented by large armies of kill robots). Ultimately even 5% is an ever increasing number of people (given population growth).
I keep looking at the clock wondering if its april 1st, cause I really cant understand how they think "Ideally, the S&E workforce -- it numbers more than 7.6 million workers -- would be expanding as a percentage of the labor force. That would mean U.S. companies are increasing their use of S&E workers." is a remotely valid assumption. Again, given population growth, "That would mean U.S. companies are increasing their use of S&E workers" that is actually happening if your holding at 5%.
Truly bizarre, its like someone misunderstood the different between what a percentage is and an absolute figure.
It has nothing to do with the number of people entering these fields. It's the number of jobs that companies are removing from these fields. They cut staff and tell those remaining that they have to work another 20hrs/wk to cover the workload.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
While the workforce stays flat, the demand continues to increase - with science and technology solutions providing more and more of the services and goods we require. So the actual effect of a flat workforce is enhanced by the increasing demand for such skills for even the most rudimentary jobs.
All that perceived Apple counter-culture crap doesn't exist on the engineering side of the house.
The closer you get to a Chinese production line, the less 'hip' the process becomes.
My town is home to the base facilities for eight of the Mauna Kea Observatories, and we're looking at the Thirty Meter Telescope in the near future as well. Needless to say, there are pretty much always job openings for engineers, technicians, and PhDs. The catch? We're on an island, and some people get tired of that.
So Science Education/Public Outreach (SE/PO) is a part of life here. Pushing Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) as good ways to make a better-than-average living is a part of life here. The scientists take over the local mall one day every spring. In late January, we take over the University for a "science day" in honor of Space Shuttle Challenger astronaut Ellison Onizuka, for kids in grades 3-8, and NASA sends an astronaut each year. And around late February or early March, there's Journey Through The Universe.
I'm actually about to head to a nearby school to spend an hour talking about science careers to a classroom of 7th-graders, so I'm getting a real kick out of this article showing up right now. The other 9 classes I'm visiting over next Monday, Tuesday and Thursday are a bit younger - grades 1-3. The idea, though, is that from Kindergarten on, kids here are meeting real live people who work in science at observatories or other "famous science places" every year and are being encouraged to stay in school, take classes about STEM, look at college majors in STEM, and become qualified for those good jobs, so that we can hire people who are from here and would love to stay here.
Last year, I was told about one of the first success stories - a guy who was in 7th grade when they started visiting classes, and as a result of what he heard over the years, had picked a STEM major at the local university, and was now going to accompany a scientist to classes as a "community ambassador" sort of person.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
We are educating kids to be users of technology, but not developers or inventors. Every time I've taken a computer or a disk drive or other electronics apart for a demonstration to the Scouts or just kids, they are always amazed. They are never taught beyond a mouse click. A lot of kids coming out of college are no better these days. Another problem is that in our zeal to bring girls into higher education, we are losing boys - those who would be most interested in engineering ( see Carpe Diem website archives for all the graphs and tables on subject preferences, Prof J does a great job of laying that argument out from high school on ).
This is an excuse to open the doors to more immigration to bring in cheap technical labour.
There is no technical shortage. Just a shortage of highly-skilled qualified people willing to work for minimal wages.
I saw recently an article in one of the local newspapers that indicated that 4,000 engineering graduates were being produced per year in Canada, 10,000 engineers per year were being brought in via immigration and only 1,000 new engineering jobs created per year, thus 13,000 engineers per year are unhappy and either unemployed or employed/under-employed in jobs outside of the field.
Add in government grants that pay 50% of the salary for non-citizen visible minority engineers, why would anybody hire a Canadian educated engineer except for when they come straight out of school?
The constant mantra of the sky is falling because we have no engineers is an old story and is used to bring in more engineers via immigration and thus deflate the average income for engineers. The problem is that governments keep on falling for this ruse.
The basic issue is a disrespect for the skills of engineers and desire to turn them into a disposable cog in a company to maximize short-term profits.
I know dozens of highly qualified engineers with 20+ years of experience that are underemployed, or unemployed or working in other fields because they cannot even get an interview nevermind a job.
The media & governments fall for this ruse over and over.
My two-cents
I would be nice to see if there is a lot of job offers for S&E or not. I mean, is this flattening due to lack of people entering those fields or because there is no more work positions to increase it? maybe there is graduates out there opening cupcake stores :P
Really? You think guys?
Then why is it that despite me having tons of technical work experience, a CS degree, and an extensive background in Graphic Design, I can't even land a simple UI designer job that pays enough to repay my student loans and pay rent at the same time? In a big-10 college town with a pretty big tech industry?
Perhaps it's because instead of R&D and progress, we're focused on blowing up brown people and stealing their oil? Perhaps the same reasons why NASA is woefully underfunded, and yet the DOD has a few billion to throw at missile research?
FUCK this country. It used to be great, now it's just a slowly-fermenting pile of excrement.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
When I was in high school, I was one of the few students that had any deeper interest in science, technology, biology, life, the universe in general...
The rest of the students were social political fashion models... they enjoyed gossiping about each other, doing gross amounts of drugs, playing sports, creating cliches and cults to give themselves the illusion of importance.
What you are seeing in the U.S. is a large cult forming... a cult of idiots, who will ultimately destroy themselves on behalf of their ignorance, hate, and delusion.
Malpractice insurance goes for upwards 100,000 per year. The New Yorker reported it (2006) at 265,000 per year.
The article says the reasons aren't certain, but my experience doing technical interviews for my employer seems to point to a possible cause -- perceived lack of stable career prospects.
My background: I work for a medium to large IT company doing systems integration -- code for "troubleshooter, lab rat, make-stuff-work-in-the-face-of-no-documentation person." For a person with the right temperament and skills, it's a very fun job. However, whenever we go out looking for new team members, we get back lots of less-than-qualified people. I'm not talking about qualities like "experts in 4 different operating platforms, genius-level coding skills, etc." -- I'm talking more along the lines of "communicates well, writes clear documentation, and has logical thinking skills." Everything else is trainable in my mind, but if you don't have the engineer/tinkerer/figure-it-out-without-help mindset, you can't do this job well. And oh yes, the pay is decent, and the job is stable if you're good at it and contributing excellent work.
The only problem is that we're in the NYC area, and so is the finance industry. Anecdotal evidence from my colleagues in finance states that any new college grad who is remotely good at science, math and engineering is going into finance or business. Unfortunately for us, that's probably a rational choice given the current employment climate. When you turn 21 or so and are faced with constant talk of outsourcing/offshoring, companies living with a skeleton crew because they don't want to hire and add to costs on one side, and see in finance/business an easy and very lucrative job market, what would you pick? Go back a couple of years before that...and compare the STEM students working in the lab/studying all the time with the business/psychology/communications majors partying 24/7 and coming out ahead of the game in terms of compensation and ease of work. Then, you really start to see what's wrong.
One other problem is the outsourcing/offshoring of routine IT work. Some of the jobs that us IT veterans got our start in are way less accessible than before. I started in tech support/help desk, and it was the best training for dealing with angry users and calmly troubleshooting a problem without changing 100 things. Now, those help desk jobs are overseas or at one of three or four huge IT service providers. So, strike two -- uncertain future employment/compensation prospects, lack of entry-level positions to learn the business...what else is stacked against us?
Personally, I still see a need for *good, competent* engineering talent. Even though most companies and products now are just marketing, flash and repackaging of old technology, someone has to come up with the next neat thing. (Or in my case, someone has to make the 45 neat new things that all got mashed into our software/systems work together.) The problem is that business hs to either start signaling that they really do want and pay for talent, or we won't have replacements for all the people who are slated to retire soon.
Keep on insulting smart people with nasty names like dork and nerd... and this will drop to 0% in no time...
Or perhaps I should just say BULLSHIT. First, the pool of donors is the same for STEM and Athletics at a university, the alumni. Second; facilities, staff, pensions, health care, and maintenance almost always fall under the general University budget, of which STEM is apportioned out of. The Athletic department usually pays a sweet lease for the space, advertising, and the salaries for the highest level staff.
Raise the benefit & liability requirements to the same level as FTE. Once all parties except the worker share liability and benefit costs for temporary work, multiplied over the number of middlemen as well as being inversely proportional to the length of the work (with the option to reward lower skill level entry)** one can then kill that abuse.
** - i.e. it would reward people who go on directly hired, lifetime employment with one or a few employers over being a one-night-stand contractor.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Perhaps employers simply aren't admitting young people into the workforce. They complain about not finding quality candidates and are unwilling to train someone out of school.
...of the fall of Rome. You better watch out though because the dying body of this beast is still going to kick and flail for another 20-50 years. You don't want to be in the way.
Silence is a state of mime.
Maybe engineers are getting more productive at their jobs. I used to submit a job to our stress engineers and get a reply back in a few days. I would then iterate my design and try again. I now do several iterations of analysis myself in a day. When I submit my job to stress, it will go through with only minor changes or none at all. A large part of this is due to advances in software and computing hardware.
Some people think they are getting a bargain by outsourcing engineering. My peers might not be able to compete on price. But the evidence against outsourcing is written all over the problems and then corrections to those problems of the development of a certain large airplane. (I'm not permitted to speak freely by company policy.) My employer ended up buying companies outright and sending it's engineers overseas to get the suppliers straightened out.
I'd put myself and the people that sit near me up against any engineers in the world on a price/performance basis. I don't claim that we are cheap. We are effective. When the work has impact on a global scale, our efforts are essentially free. Manager would do well to understand this.
Couple this with other news items about soaring tuition costs and increasing numbers of schools that have simply closed their engineering and computer science departments and one gets a picture of a society that is in decline. Somewhere between 'the crazy years' and 'marching morons'. Kind of explains US politics for the last few years as well. Not to worry, the Chinese are training their kids (in US universities) so there will be someone to design the next generation of TV sets. Too bad we will eventually not be able to afford them.
This is a load of crap. There are no jobs out there!!! I graduated with a doctorate in chemistry several years ago, and I am still looking. Most of the short term jobs that I have had could be done by someone who has a community college degree. It has been my experience that when I applied to a number of colleges for an instructor position that they were hell-bent on hiring someone that can not speak English in the name of diversity. I would never recommend going into science or Engeneering if all they are going to get mental gymnastics out of it.
First it was manufacturing, next IT, next Software Development, now science and engineering. The government wonders why the economy is in the shitter. It's called globalization. Outsourcing sucks. Corporations are cutting the domestic workforce, and they wonder why their products are not selling. We gotta take industry back and reward US companies that design, and build their products here. Screw this globalization shit.
Nobody wants to go into these jobs because they require you to be able to think. And of course since the GOAL of Public Education for the last 20 years has been to prevent the student from thinking of course we are running low on young thinkers.
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One issue is the large "winnowing out" of STEM majors in college:
Among students who majored in liberal arts, business or other fields, 73% of white students and about 63% of black and Latino students finished their degrees in five years.
Forty-one percent of American students who start off majoring in science, math, engineering or technology fields graduate from those programs within six years.
The question is whether this "winnowing" is due to lack of preparation of the students before college, or simply a non-educational strategy of signaling that the students who "survive" are of high quality, in which case the institution should consider not calling itself a "higher learning" institution but a "better signaling" institution.
Students in general are choosing non-STEM majors. Top US graduating majors are 1) Business 2) Social sciences and history 3) Health professions and related clinical sciences 4) Education 5) Psychology 6) Visual and performing arts.
I feel pretty bad for anyone who took out loans for majors #2 or #6 and think they can pay them back...#5 will have a rough time as well. Education doesn't pay well on day 1, but if you can stick it out for 10 years and sneak a graduate degree you can do OK, depending on your union contract.
One other issue is that while more women than men are now attending college (57% women/43% men), women are even more likely to choose non-STEM majors. In Business, the female/male ratio is nearly 50/50, but in the #2 top major group of Social Sciences, it is 64/36 in favor of women. In #3 Health, it is 76/24. In #4 Education, it is 77/23.
In CS the female/male ratio is 30/70, in Engineering it is 17/83.
Physical sciences are closer to even (47/53) while Math is slightly more female (58/48).
Its all part of the attitude in the U.S. towards S&E, leading to a transition from a design-and-manufacturing powerhouse to a fully dumbed-down service-oriented economy. Would you like fries with that?
Not 4 year CS or 4 Tech school.
No more like 1-3 year mixed school / apprenticeship.
To many people get turned down due lack of use less 4 year BA.
"Oh golly, Yes!" They must be thinking. "Let me work for an engineering degree so I can compete with someone making $8/hr. in the Philippines and be laid off by the time I'm 50 because I'm "too expensive" and my skills are "obsolete" according to a bean counter and an upper management ignoramus who knows nothing about my industry or what I do."
Sure! Why, I bet the kids are just lining up for that "opportunity." That bed has been made by American corporations. Unfortunately, we must all lie in it.
The USA and its wealth are being harvested by an international elite who don't give a rat's ass about the USA or any other nation state. Nobody with power/money has any interest in having a strong, stable middle class in the USA. The best skill set for a young person with a passion for engineering is the ability to speak Chinese or Hindi and the skill set to acquire permanent working status in China or India, where at least the cost of living is more in line with salaries.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
We've really created a hostile environment for anyone wanting to study science as a kid.
Can't give your kid a chemistry set, those don't exist. Can't buy chemicals, you might be making a bomb.
For several years (after 9/11) you couldn't buy a model rocket engine, 'cause of course you could use it for terrorism somehow.
Until recently you couldn't build a UAV. Well, you could build it, but flying it was illegal.
Students are arrested if they bring electronics projects to school (Can't find the link, remember reading about this).
Having canning jars and a bag of fertilizer in your car can get you arrested for having bomb-making materials.
Taking apart a smoke detector (and using it to demonstrate alpha radiation) is a "grievous offense" (actual NRC term) and can get you raided and have *all* your lab equipment taken away.
Your hackerspace will be shut down instead of "given 30 days for compliance" as would be the case for a company.
Really... what's left? Mathematics? I'm surprised that we have *any* young people interested in science ATM. We make it nigh impossible and come down hard on them when they do.
salaries are flat over the last 10 years but the purchasing power of that flat salary has nose-dived. gas and food cost *twice* what they did 10 years ago.
A high school graduate can earn $45,000 working as an assistant manager at a local gas station or restaurant. They could spend 4+ years working hard to get a degree in engineering or science, owe $100,000+ afterward, and earn a starting pay of maybe $55,000. Long term, top pay for a manager anywhere is higher. Why bother with engineering or science? Average pay for science and engineering jobs has been largely stagnant for the last 20 years. While many science and engineering jobs have moved outside the US, workers from other countries have moved to the US, all driving down salaries. Now add that long term research is pretty much gone in the US and even research labs compete for what they can turn out in the next six months.
Guest workers are used for knowledge transfer, where said workers go back to their home nation.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
a have a good friend w/a PhD in biochemistry who told me about this focus group thing (for newly minted PhDs) he got pulled into early in his post-doc. he made the common complaint about the "funnel" to tenured professor & how was he supposed to afford a life/family in the next decade while he waited for someone in front of him to die. he said the woman rolled her eyes & said: "well, if that's what you want you need to get a REAL job!". my friend said his head kind of snapped back, his jaw dropped & then the woman got the "oh, SH1T! I shouldn't have said that..." look.
he's now a successful account rep (re: sales weasel) & while he's at least still in the biotech field it's a waste of a brilliant mind (from a societal perspective - it's worked out great for him/family)... I guess I owe the woman thanks myself b/c had she not said that he probably wouldn't be making enough to live in our part of town & we'd never have met one of our (couple) best friends...
Even if someone decides to enter S&E career fields, there are very few real jobs offered by real employers -- it is much easier to use "this gun is for hire" contractors that you can REALLY abuse and dump with few consequences.
Contractors are used with great success appropriately. My father contracted out to a number of contractors the company could never justify having full-time, to do specialist work, which is the whole point. For example - a guy who knew CCDs inside and out. Another specialized in PCB layout, generating boards my father (an EE for decades, no stranger to PCB layout) described as "art."
All these guys were well compensated for their work and in some cases had more work than they could handle. So, if you're a programmer - find something that you think has a market which interests you and you're highly qualified in, hone your skills, and market yourself. You will never be able to be a contractor as a Java programmer - you're a total commodity.
If you want to talk about inappropriate use of contractors...well, the IRS has been cracking down on companies that use contractor status to avoid payroll taxes and benefits. My state has been, too.
Please help metamoderate.
The US has a very disturbed economic situation. One side of capitalism is that it can be a disease in which all good things are cannibalised in the name of profits. Combine that with a recession where money is hard to take in to begin with and you are setting up a tragedy. Then we have the guest worker problem. Underneath that resides another issue that will really upset a lot of people. Foreign engineers and science graduates have managed to survive in a climate that is hostile to humanity in general and excessively demanding in education. I am far from convinced that the best American scholars can function at the same level as many scholars from Asia, India, china or the smaller nations on the Pacific rim. Also we have some serious scholars that have emerged from the iron curtain nations in Europe as well. And despite the fact that one can stand with one foot in the US and one foot in Canada I have seen output from Canadians that looked superior to anything I have seen in American students. Then we have another cultural obstacle as well. The most educated are rarely on the boards or upper management positions in American companies. We seem to have a cultural distaste for the well educated and want corporate leaders more like the common folk. That somewhat explains why a brilliant young engineer in a firm from Burma might be seen as some sort of odd egg head that we can make money on but not as a real human being. It can get pretty ugly at times.
Jobs that exist in America in STEM are under constant pressure.
I work in IT, and the gateways jobs where we used to draw programmers and sysadmins from are now overseas (call center, warehousing, tech support, etc). Most of the junior programming positions are also overseas. About the only way in that I can see anymore for an American is from the business side - work a clerical job, get promoted to business analyist and then get some technical skills to make the move to IT.
So the jobs that remain need a seasoned person whose technical proficiency is broad but not deep, and whose communication skills and understanding of the business side of things are quite high. The only people who walk in the door able to do this are people who've been doing it for a number of years. After the 2009 layoffs there are a glut of these people. Young people with no experience don't have a prayer of getting this kind of job, no matter what their academic qualifications.
The other area I have some experience in is scientific research - the entry level jobs there are typically graduate student research fellowships. Which require a non-dysfunctional grant system. It was pretty screwed up in 1989-90 when I was involved in that. I don't imagine it is better now, it is likely a lot worse.
This is a demand-side problem, like much of what is wrong in our economy. If there was an actual demand for entry level STEM in America, there would be a supply of young people ready to take those jobs. (there may be a demand for senior STEM....but that's not actually helpful in encouraging the next generation to undergo the expensive and demanding training for a STEM job)
That, combined with the college/student loan bubble. S&E students tend to be, well, intelligent. The combination of outsourcing concerns, college costs vastly exceeding inflation (which any intelligent middle/high schooler witnessed during those years), college costs more or less exceeding what one could realistically pull in with employment, and the fact that there's no way out of student loans that didn't produce return on investment would scare away plenty of people with the natural talent needed for S&E. These people may seek out other fields that can be entered through different means, finding other means to make it.
Those who simply equate college=more money and don't THINK, often go into unprofitable majors, don't work part of it off and leave their four year with five figures of debt, or worse. Incidentally, their burden on the demand is responsible for scaring away those who would otherwise get into profitable S&E fields.
At the risk of getting too political, we have deep inlaid problems that will take years if not decades for the masses to finally pick up on...
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
Nothing says the US can use its top-of-the-world position to bring it back to a more manageable US/UK/Western EU/Australia alliance.
Why should globalization mean that the developed world guts itself, sending the bits that made the country developed to some hellhole?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Not just because of the H1Bs. Read about recent IBM layoffs of US workers.
Face reality, tech companies are offshoring US jobs, and inshoring visa workers, and fast as they possibly can. There is no sign that US employers will ever let up.
Unemployment of US STEM workers is way up, and salaries are down.
For US workers, avoiding STEM careers should be a no brainer.
We would our kids study to develop techs, when US employers are throwing US tech developers under the bus?
Offshore workers are cheaper. Who wants to compete with third world wages?
STEM is being offshored, and inshored, to death.
There is no way to stop it. All we can do is avoid STEM.
Why should globalization mean that the developed world guts itself, sending the bits that made the country developed to some hellhole?
Because that's what it takes to put a DVD player on sale at Wal-Mart for $19.95.
Which is a pretty goddamned amazing thing, when you think about it.
Anybody can see where this is heading. US employers do want to hire US STEM workers - period.
US workers would have to be flat-out stupid to want to compete with third world wages.
There are some good jobs left, that is true, but anybody can see the situation is going downhill fast for US STEM workers.
I am a PhD educated biotech/nanotech specialist and I currently would be happy is someone offered me a 50k salary. I actually did the PhD in one of the major US groups. Coming to the US and getting a PhD was a big mistake for me.
...when you need an overpriced BS degree to do even the most basic brain-dead coding jobs, a lot of bright people are working at the local KFC.
This country is full of people on i-phones who don't know how to solder.
unemployed.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3213663920916963027 ..
Watch HDnet, Dan Rather report "No Thanks for Everything."
Also watch "Stolen Jobs"
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3213663920916963027 ..
That's a continuing education thing, and quite frankly, I wouldn't want anyone on my staff who isn't interested in increasing their skillset over the time they work for me.
Are staff supposed to find the time to work on increasing their skillset before or after they work the 80 hours per-week that they need to work to meet the deadline set by you and your sales staff?
20 years ago (pre-Gerstner) it was IBM policy that increasing skillset was so important they would allow you spend part of your "workday" hours on it and they generally set project deadlines accordingly. Bet IBM doesn't do that now.
Do *you* make employee technical enrichment that kind of a priority for your business or do you just let it be known that you'll fire people who don't work killer deadlines and then take even more time away from their families to learn new skills?
Who are either unemployed, or not working in engineering.
Maybe all US techies are stupid? That would explain why the US practically invented the entire IT industry. And what the US did not invent came from Europe.
India and China (where all new techies are coming from) have not been known for technology innovation for several centuries, at least.
Funny how all the "best and brightest" come from countries where people earn about $2 a day.
Very well writen post, thank you.
It's nice to know that somebody gets it.
Only people who come from third world countries - countries which are known for cheap labor, and not known for technology innovation - qualify as "best and brightest."
To the first one: why shouldn't globalization mean the third world is empowered to rise out of third world status? Do you dislike the idea that people in those countries get to live a better life?
Now for your second "should" question "Why should globalization mean that the developed world guts itself"
You are making the false assumption that globalization means the developed world gutting itself. It doesn't. Whether or not globalization guts you is dependent on how competitive you are on the (global) market
Here's where people go "but how can we compete with China/India/etc"? My response to those types of questions: buddy, if I knew the answer, I wouldn't be here, I'd be using the answer to make myself rich
What I do know is that it's not up to government to find out how to compete, but individuals and businesses.
Sorry but don't need engineers or scientists. We need more insurance salesmen and bankers. America isn't a 'make stuff' country so we don't need people who make stuff.
. . . you're not advertising what the pay is. And just because you have "job openings" doesn't mean you have actual jobs (rather than idle wishlists of technology skills), nor does it mean you have jobs that pay a living wage. So save all the leg work trying to sell kids on jobs that aren't observably "successful"; just update your listings to be something better than the generic HR copy that it is now.
equals Third World Country.
THAT is the reason it's "stalling".
Too many sub 80 IQ non-white parasites destroying what used to be the best country in the world. What a sick joke. And all thanks to your Jewish 'masters', who half of you idiots would defend with your lives, you 'useful idiots'.
Your country is being INVADED by all the dregs of the third world, and many whites actually condone this bullshit and act as spies for the state, in case anybody dares to question it.
"...not put in a new medical school for over 30 years..."
What about this at Univ. of Central Florida? http://med.ucf.edu/about/
The issue is not lack of qualified people, but lack of good jobs and opportunities for the qualified people. More people will get advanced degrees if that would guarantee a solid financial outcome with a balanced lifestyle. Today, in America, no training can guarantee both of these. If you are lucky, you can make some money, but chances are your life will be your job. Forget about been able to live without stress, or having a balanced family life.
That's why standardization is so important. Then you need only a small number of S&E's to keep everything up to speed. Write once, use everywhere.
Why would I want to pay an American 40k fresh out of college with no experience + 40k in healthcare costs +20k taxes, OSHA, and other regulatory hidden costs, when I can hire a Chinese for $8,000 a year, no taxes, and no health care costs. I can abuse and force them to live on campus and make them work 70 hour a weeks and they will glady do so without complaining. Wahoo!
Plus they work where the manufactoring and R&D and everything else which is already in China.
I get a nice bonus and a 6,000 square foot home I do not need and a porshce to screw over other Americans. Sounds like a great deal!
Unless you are a CEO, or a burger flipper I do not understand why you would want to hire anyone in the 1st world. It doesn't make any business sense. ... sadly I am serious and not a troll here. But this is how coprorate America or corporate Europe or any 1st world company thinks and operates. If I need to hire engineers to design products it makes sense to place them near where it is manufactured. That is not in America anymore like it was 10 years ago where six sigma and JIT inventory systems rules. Today it is all done in India and China.
http://saveie6.com/
I don't know how much of a problem this is in higher academia, but according to more articles like this
And the fact that prestigious universities such as this only accept a handful of students in computer science in a year, it's not surprising. One of the more surprising things is that UW received 40 million dollars from Paul Allen a while ago, and they used it to build a giant 40 million dollar new computer science building. But the number of students they accepted per year didn't change. Why is this? If you have lots of students who want to go there, why not use extra funds you have to expand the number of applications you can accept?
I dunno, I'm sure the downward trend of education spending all over our country isn't helping universities to expand the number of students they can accept either.
Meet new people, and kill them.
Even if someone decides to enter S&E career fields, there are very few real jobs offered by real employers -- it is much easier to use "this gun is for hire" contractors that you can REALLY abuse and dump with few consequences.
Contractors are used with great success appropriately. My father contracted out to a number of contractors the company could never justify having full-time, to do specialist work, which is the whole point. For example - a guy who knew CCDs inside and out. Another specialized in PCB layout, generating boards my father (an EE for decades, no stranger to PCB layout) described as "art."
All these guys were well compensated for their work and in some cases had more work than they could handle. So, if you're a programmer - find something that you think has a market which interests you and you're highly qualified in, hone your skills, and market yourself. You will never be able to be a contractor as a Java programmer - you're a total commodity.
Say what? You don't know what you are talking about. I did Java for 11 years, almost 9 of which were as a paid contractor, with O/T. Excellent money making with no shortage of jobs (not even during 2008.)
The reality is that the majority of job opportunities in Java (and "enterprise" and web software development for that manner) are in the form of contract work, many of them with paid O/T. If you are really good at Java, you can make a 6-figure salary as a contractor. Granted that most of the Java work available out there is just monkey coding crap that can be easily outsourced, but that is also true for all fields, even EE.
When it comes to Java, there is a good number of well-paying gigs out there, most of that for contractors only. So, sorry, you are wrong. If you work in Java, chances are you are a contractor. And if you are good, there is no shortage of work with good salaries.
If you want to talk about inappropriate use of contractors...well, the IRS has been cracking down on companies that use contractor status to avoid payroll taxes and benefits. My state has been, too.
But that is usually with contracting agencies "subcontracting" to other contractors (in particular while abusing 1099 forms and other "inventive" forms of S-corps.) Midsize and large Java shops predominantly use contractors via reputable contracting agencies (and both tend to avoid the 1099 scheme just to avoid the IRS wrath.)
USA should leave it to the free market, as they "recommended" to other countries. Market is simple, and solves every problem you might think of. Doing anything different would be socialistic and un-american.
If you really insist in a science, engineering, etc career try to get into the military-industrial complex. It has been performing well since Eisenhower's time and its future is as bright as ever. Those jobs are no being outsourced any time soon.
I don't know which H1-B visa sponsor got you to push this, but it's just because you're jealous of people like me going for their PhD in Electrical Engineering.
Stop hating we American-born who want to educate ourselves!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
what kind of job we need. Isn't that how it's supposed to work anyway?
is consumers to buy stuff like new phones, tablets, stocks bonds, morgages and other stuff.
Businesses make money off this. The ceos and bankers get bonuses.
Science is a problem in that it is needed at times.
Since 90% aren't smart enough to be scientists or engineers and we also need smart people for a few other things, I don't see this as likely to change.
Outsourcing in general limits duplication and skill in the people who are doing the outsourced jobs are pressed more to complete a project rather than to make it a good project.
Off-shoring straight up steals jobs from citizens, and in opinion is tantamount to treason.
The combination of these two things removes the entry level jobs that pay little and allow people to get on the job training. This in turn lowers the overall pool of jobs available thus making competition for the remaining jobs much higher and wages lower. These lower wages are no longer attracting young people to these jobs that require a lot of hard work (mental or otherwise). and before you say this isn't true ... entry level technical jobs pay the same or less than they did 15 years ago.
Good luck getting a job with that.
YES, foreigners CREATE jobs in the USA, they don't take them away.
Bullshit.
H1Bs are not legally allowed to create jobs in the USA. H1Bs are used to replace US workers with foreign workers. Watch "No Thanks for Everything."
If immigrants are creating so many jobs, then why is the suffering the worst long-term unemployment since the great depression?
H1B are not the "best and brightest" - far from it. According to the US GAO, 54% of H1Bs are entry level, only 7% work at the advanced level.
H1Bs are cheap labor used to replace American workers. H1Bs are also used to help with the offshoring of US jobs.
for our own people.
If foreign workers are a great expense, then we should stop allowing foreign workers.
I worked in the U.S. in the nineties and got the distinct impression that engineering wasn't considered a "white man's job". That is, an engineer isn't the ideal son-in-law. The Americans want to succeed with their social skills (lawyers, salesmen, bosses, doctors). The introverted engineers that deal with machinery rather than people are thought of as borderline perverted.
Americans know they need engineers to make money so they hire them. But they don't want to become engineers or marry them if they have a choice. At the height of the telecom bubble there was a brief period when engineers (the stock option millionaires) were achieving respectability, but when the bubble burst, the American society came back to its senses.
This attitude is in contrast with the rest of the world where "engineer" has a respectable ring to it, and they are considered part of the ruling elite.
Does anybody have any other kind of degree in physics?
"we've allowed the politicians to poison the well with too many policies, taxes, regulations, and laws"
actually we just moved manufacturing to places where there are no policies, taxes, regulations or laws, so you can, for example, produce poisoned baby food and kill a bunch of kids, and nobody gets in trouble for it.
if people want the US to become like China, well my question is this - why dont you just move to china? its 'adam smith on steroids' according to hedge fund manager Mitt Romney.
the entire portion of the labor force that thinks there is some future or hope in nationalism, i.e. 'them foreigners' vs 'us americans', do not get it.
corporations are international. they will do whatever they do, internationally. if you want to improve working conditions or wages for labor, you have to become international as well. nationalism is the antithesis of what is required to build an international labor movement that can compete with international capital-government structures like the Red Army and Walmart.
For example. India had a huge labor protest the other day. Banks were shut down. Banks! And telephone companies were shut down. That means that somewhere in India, there are nerds who have organized. Instead of keeping them out of the US, maybe we should be phoning them up and asking them if we can work together on strategy and tactics.
Mostly because we consider short term profit more important then long term profit. It would take foresight and the willingness to spend a little hear to get more there and that isn't as easy as cut future growth for short term gains.
we don't care if the computers, the food, the books, the radios, the films, the cars, even the drywall in our houses came from another country.
corporations are almost unregulated the way their assets pour between one country and another. they almost ignore nationality anymore.
but oh my god, if its a human being crossing an imaginary line on a map, well, we need to put up a billion regulations and an artificial line across an impenetrable desert.
it makes no sense.
Below data is from the National Center for Education Statistics. It lists U.S. Citizen and Permanent Resident STEM Related Degrees Conferred 2008 and 2009. Then, below that is another list from the Foreign Labor Certification Annual Report listing the occupations with more than 1000 Permanent (Residence) Labor Certifications, with the Office of Employment Statistics employment levels and Loss Gain. Please read and understand what the data says – that there is NO shortage of US workers.
From the National Center for Education Statistics
_U.S._Citizen_and_Permanent_Resident_ STEM Related Degrees Conferred 2008 and 2009:
Natural Resources and Conservation
———————————-
Doctorate Degrees: 585
Doctorate Degree-Research Scholarship: 208
Master’s Degrees: 4,802
Bachelor’s Degrees: 19,033
Associate’s Degrees: 2,388
Total 2008 and 2009: 27,016
Architecture and Related Services
———————————
Doctorate Degrees: 143
Doctorate Degree-Research Scholarship: 88
Master’s Degrees: 10,795
Bachelor’s Degrees: 19,267
Associate’s Degrees: 1,125
Total 2008 and 2009: 31,418
Communications Technologies/Technicians and Support Services
————————————————————
Doctorate Degrees: 6
Doctorate Degree-Research Scholarship: 752
Master’s Degrees:
Bachelor’s Degrees: 9,760
Associate’s Degrees: 8,904
Total 2008 and 2009: 19,422
Computer and Information Sciences and Support Services
——————————————————
Doctorate Degrees: 974
Doctorate Degree-Research Scholarship: 423
Master’s Degrees: 19,387
Bachelor’s Degrees: 73,795
Associate’s Degrees: 57,910
Total 2008 and 2009: 152,489
Engineering
———–
Doctorate Degrees: 4,136
Doctorate Degree-Research Scholarship: 2,410
Master’s Degrees: 38,459
Bachelor’s Degrees: 131,645
Associate’s Degrees: 4,373
Total 2008 and 2009: 181,023
Engineering Technologies/Technicians
————————————
Doctorate Degrees: 54
Doctorate Degree-Research Scholarship: 7
Master’s Degrees: 4,444
Bachelor’s Degrees: 29,557
Associate’s Degrees: 60,724
Total 2008 and 2009: 94,786
Biological and Biomedical Sciences
———————————-
Doctorate Degrees: 6,979
Doctorate Degree-Research Scholarship: 2,800
Master’s Degrees: 16,305
Bachelor’s Degrees: 155,964
Associate’s Degrees: 4,482
Total 2008 and 2009: 186,530
Mathematics and Statistics
————————–
Doctorate Degrees: 1,001
Doctorate Degree-Research Scholarship: 456
Master’s Degrees: 6,349
Bachelor’s Degrees: 29,343
Associate’s Degrees: 1,698
Total 2008 and 2009: 38,847
Physical Sciences
—————–
Doctorate Degrees: 3,798
Doctorate Degree-Research Scholarship: 1,824
Master’s Degrees: 8,376
Bachelor’s Degrees: 42,710
Associate’s Degrees: 3,874
Total 2008 and 2009: 60,582
Science Technologies/Technicians
——————————–
Doctorate Degrees: 5
Doctorate Degree-Research Scholarship:
Master’s Degrees: 45
Bachelor’s Degrees: 599
Associate’s Degrees: 2,817
Total 2008 and 2009: 3,466
Health Professions and Related Clinical Sciences
——————————
The people who fund political campaigns see us as servants with out pay coming out of their pockets.
Raise the benefit & liability requirements to the same level as FTE.
Right, because fixing the symptoms with even more regulations and heavy handed tyrannical control over people's lives and business contracts is what we should be doing right now.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have posted this until my fingers have bled. The STEM shortage is a myth. We even discussed this on /.
see:
http://it.slashdot.org/story/08/03/10/1454250/it-labor-shortage-is-just-a-myth
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Get real. Want more people to go into SE? LEt the market work and quit campaigning for an increase in H1Bs to address "desperate labor shortages!!!".
People enrolled in SE when the pay was high and the opportunities plenty. OF course high pay pisses management off because that's money that could have gone to their bonuses. So the corporations flooded the market with H1Bs to drive down wages and create abusive working conditions and whaddya know- people quit enrolling in SE.
If you want to see SE enrollment up, we need to see hard, structural safeguards in place against corporations jacking with immigration for the purpose of manipulating the labor market.
Oh and corporations don't love people over 40 either, even though they're easily the most experienced, versatile and productive IT workers available. Sorry, but most of "new" technology and languages are old wine in new bottles, or old ideas that were tried and retired because they were found to be fundamentally flawed- case in point the whole anti-relational, noSQL movement. But of course if you don't know history, because you're oh, 22 and you never studied history, you're doomed to repeat it.. at a great waste of time and money.
Why study for 5 and 8 years and go into triple digit debt just to have a 10 or 15 year career?
Slave labor is the only place management will ever be happy with. Other than that, "desperate labor shortage! Emergency Will Robinson ... Emergency!"
One could make an argument that modern China is something akin to a technocracy. I'm relatively certain that most of the high-ranking officials and politicians (if you want to call them that) have science or engineering background. This is one of the first articles that came up when I googled "China technocracy", I'm sure you can find something with less provocative headline, if you want to. Made in China: The Revenge of the Nerds
My father contracted out to a number of contractors the company could never justify having full-time, to do specialist work, which is the whole point. For example - a guy who knew CCDs inside and out. Another specialized in PCB layout, generating boards my father (an EE for decades, no stranger to PCB layout) described as "art."
Your father and his company represent the problem of increased distrust in workers, as opposed to training them up. They (and all those that use contractors to get out of the proper FTE) deserve any legislation that makes contractors more expensive than making them a proper part of the company with full benefits.
All these guys were well compensated for their work and in some cases had more work than they could handle
Exception, not rule for very few people. The majority of people are not meant to be a contractor, where they do well when there is stability and security.
If you want to talk about inappropriate use of contractors
The inappropriate use of contractors is anywhere within any science/technology interest, especially the lower-level ones. Flexibility is code for disposability.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I've helped several PhD candidates who were not all that bright (and professors likewise).
But the fact is that there are no requirements that H-1B recipients actually be very bright, and both GAO and the US DoLabor have admitted as much, stating that the vast majority are not.
But what if a visa applicant were, indeed, very bright? What if his IQ were in the top 0.5%, or his GRE or MCAT scores were? Under the current, lax regime, his application would be dumped into the pile with hundreds of thousands of dullards. It would not get conscientious consideration. It would take more time process, as would his green card application, than if the USA had a reasonable process of conscientiously selecting the best, conducting proper background investigations and only admitting those who pass muster.
Being bright or "best" is not about having a "degree".
While we are getting away from my original point, I do agree with you here. That said, statistically you are getting smarter, wealthier people when you screen by degree or qualifications.
Linus Pauling or Albert Einstein
Now we're completely off-point :) I don't know about Linus, but I don't think you should call Albert Einstein a "drop out". He indeed left his high school, but he did so with the full intention of continuing his higher education at another institution. He basically snuck away from a high school that emphasized rote learning and ended up applying to colleges when he got home. Other high-profile "drop-outs" often left school because what they considered a great business opportunity popped up (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc), not because the couldn't hack it. So yeah, if the owner of a fortune 500 company (or even just a credible startup) wants to move his operations to CA, I think we should let him - degree or no degree. He should be able to bring his undegreed staff as well, along with his whole extended family :)
than if the USA had a reasonable process of conscientiously selecting the best, conducting proper background investigations and only admitting those who pass muster.
Now we're back to my original point - I agree 100%. The US currently does not try to attract the best and brightest, and that is a rotten shame.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
why shouldn't globalization mean the third world is empowered to rise out of third world status?
Not if it comes at the cost of the First World.
You are making the false assumption that globalization means the developed world gutting itself. It doesn't.
Despite your claim to the contrary, the developed world is gutting itself to prop up a region that is amenable to slavery.
Whether or not globalization guts you is dependent on how [overused buzzword] you are on the [overused buzzword]
So freedom for workers is not a market-friendly value, evidenced by businesses
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.