Shot in the Dark

The STEM Scam

As anyone who’s done hiring for web designers, Java programmers or network techs knows, there’s no shortage of technical workers; wages throughout most of the IT sector have been worse than stagnant for quite some time.

And yet not only do our kids constantly have “Take STEM courses!” beaten into their heads, but the government and business want more tech workers immigrating to the US.

Now, a survey shows there isn’t a shortage:

In looking at the latest government data available, my co-author and I found the following: In 2012, there were more than twice as many people with STEM degrees (immigrants and native-born) as there were STEM jobs — 5.3 million STEM jobs vs. 12.1 million people with STEM degrees. Only one-third of natives who have a STEM degree and have a job work in a STEM occupation. There are 1.5 million native-born Americans with engineering degrees not working as engineers, as well as half a million with technology degrees, 400,000 with math degrees, and 2.6 million with science degrees working outside their field. In addition, there are 1.2 million natives with STEM degrees who are not working.

Meanwhile, less than half of immigrants with STEM degrees work in STEM jobs. In particular, just 23 percent of all immigrants with engineering degrees work as engineers. Of the 700,000 immigrant STEM workers allowed into the country between 2007 and 2012, only one-third got a STEM job, about one-third got a non-STEM job, and about one-third are not working.

But enough about the statisticians – what is the market saying?

Wage trends are one of the best measures of labor demand. If STEM workers were in short supply, wages would be increasing rapidly. But wage data from multiple sources show little growth over the last 12 years. We found that real hourly wages (adjusted for inflation) grew on average just 0.7 percent a year from 2000 to 2012 for STEM workers, and annual wages grew even less — 0.4 percent a year. Wage growth is very modest for almost every category of STEM worker as well

The drive to jam kids – especially girls – into STEM classes is just a long-term plan to drive down tech costs.

Posted

in

,

by

Mitch Berg

Tags:

Comments

12 responses to “The STEM Scam”

  1. Joe Avatar
    Joe

    As one who was so bad in what are now called STEM classes and therefore allowed not to take any in high school. In both undergraduate and graduate studies I kept myself away from them.

    Consequently, I can see the value of at least mandating some exposure to them.

    As to employment gluts and education, I would support some type of government aid situation in which financial aid would only be offered, or offered in varying degrees, to those studying in fields deemed necessary to the economy. While such predictions may be difficult to determine four years out, it would still be better than what’s going on now, and may give the taxpayers some value for their “donation” to higher education. The financial aid receipt would also be contingent upon successful completion of the course, based, at least in part, on grades and instructor input.

  2. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    Seeds and STEMs are all that’s left, dude. Obama and his “buds” have bogarted the rest.

  3. rudytbone Avatar
    rudytbone

    Let’s assume your assumptions are correct. Would it still not be better to have kids educated in actual hard sciences that require facts, logic, and cognitive ability than to have them educated in some psuedo-science, touchy feely BS?

  4. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Rudy TBone: We’re talking two separate questions, here.

    Do I think kids should get real education in real science and math, as well as the history, literature and logic to help them be useful critical thinkers, and the skills needed to communicate like an adult? Absolutely.

    That’s different from “should we be working overtime to boost the number of people going into technology when most technology fields are chock full of labor already”.

  5. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    ” . . . when most technology fields are chock full of CHEAP IMPORTED labor already”.

    There, fixed it for you.

    .

  6. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    There are six billion people on the planet. Even if we only give Temporary Worker Visas to the most brilliant .0001 of them, that’s 600,000 American STEM jobs gone. God help you if you ever got a B; you’re completely unqualified to compete.

    Open the borders to bring us The Best? Close the borders to Employ Americans?
    .

  7. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    JD, the longer I see what cheap imported goods have done to American workers, the more I think protectionist tariffs are in order. I’d rather see wages diverted to workers by creating jobs in the private sector than by expanding what’s now effectively white-collar welfare like SSDI. Will it hurt our standard of living? Probably, but there’s nothing worse for a person’s self-worth than not having a job.

  8. Powhatan Mingo Avatar
    Powhatan Mingo

    replace the income tax — which steals wages from productive workers — with a “tariff for revenue only”.
    Sure, smuggling will uptick, and people will game the system, but it can’t be worse than the system in place now. States could still keep their wage tax, if they dared.

  9. Speed Gibson Avatar
    Speed Gibson

    The real scam is the curriculum itself, as I saw in presentations in my district. This is parent placation, just like pre-K and all day K. It’s also another brick in the wall of the certification myth. I’ve seen endless contract programmers over my 40+ years in the business that were next to useless because they couldn’t work unsupervised, couldn’t communicate, couldn’t get along with people, couldn’t be trusted in front of customers or business partners, some even questionably literate or intelligent. But they had technical training! That’s all a business wants, right?

  10. Joe Avatar
    Joe

    Mandated state licensure is an almost certain kiss of mediocrity. Their endless addition of costly requirements and mandates certainly facilitates the licensure and subsequent hiring of the less competent. This is quite obvious with the state licensing of law enforcement and in the psychological field.

  11. Waaaaa | Shot in the Dark

    […] starters?  Everyone leaves technology, eventually. And by “everyone”, I mean that eventually, some people decide that the romance has left […]

  12. Bubble Talk | Shot in the Dark

    […] to STEM as a panacaea?  It’s a bit of a racket; business is pushing STEM even as wages are stagnant and industry imports “labor” from […]

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.