The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage
23rd March 2014
Ironically the vigorous claims of shortages concern occupations in science and engineering, yet manage to ignore or reject most of the science-based evidence on the subject. The repeated past cycles of “alarm/boom/bust” have misallocated public and private resources by periodically expanding higher education in science and engineering beyond levels for which there were attractive career opportunities. In so doing they produced large unintended costs for those talented students who devoted many years of advanced education to prepare for careers that turned out to be unattractive by the time they graduated, or who later experienced massive layoffs in mid-career with few prospects to be rehired.
The author includes, but does not draw some obvious conclusions from, the fact that a lot of STEM jobs today are filled by workers from overseas, where income expectations are lower and who therefore will work for lower wages than native-born candidates.