About that STEM shortage
/A week or so ago, somebody on Twitter shared this post at the US Census Bureau blog1 on employment in STEM fields.2 It includes a chart showing the trends in the fields as a fraction of total STEM employment. It doesn't tell you about would-be STEM workers who are unemployed, nor does it tell you about unfilled positions in these areas. Still, I think you can get a rough idea of the relative demand for workers in each field. If there are many people currently employed in a field, it implies a large demand for that field. Said another way, if there weren't demand for that work, why would those people still have jobs?
I was not surprised to see that T and E are bigger slices of the STEM pie. What did surprise me was how much bigger they are. So here, for your viewing pleasure, is a little graphic. The colored bars are proportional to each field's contribution to total STEM employment in 2011.3
Science includes life, physical and social sciences. Technology means "computer workers," and it's 50% of STEM employment. Engineering accounts for approximately another third of the jobs. Sorry, Math people, no jobs for you.
So when people are talking about a STEM shortage, do they really mean STEM, or do they maybe mean TE? I'm guessing the latter.
Update: Here's some more reading on the subject. via @Wandedob
1: Anyone else think it's kind of neat that there's an official US Census Bureau blog? It's called Random Samplings.
2: "STEM" here means the usual "science, technology, engineering and math," but it includes life, physical and social sciences, which isn't always the case. Also "technology" really means "computers," which is, admittedly, a pretty broad definition.
3: The numbers I used come from the chart in the post