Poster #115 - The Changing Composition of the STEM Skilled Technical Workforce

• In Event: Saturday Poster Luncheon

Abstract

A dedicated and thriving STEM workforce is essential to “fostering and sustaining innovation, economic competitiveness, and national security” for the United States (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2024:151). About one-half of all STEM jobs are held by workers without bachelor’s degrees; this group is known as the Skilled Technical Workforce (STW; National Science Board 2024). Previous estimates of the STW have found this workforce has grown from 16.1 million workers in 2014 to 19.3 million workers in 2021 (National Science Board 2024; Rothwell 2015).

Rothwell (2015) defined the STW by first identifying occupations with high STEM knowledge and technical scores using the O*NET skills database and then selecting the occupations where more than one-half of the workers had less than a BA degree. This method leaves out workers in jobs requiring high STEM knowledge and technical scores that have more educated workers. However, STEM occupations with higher shares of BAs may be accessible to workers without BAs who gain skills by working in related occupations and then transferring those skills. A career approach shifts the focus to workers and how they access and move through a set of related occupations as they gain experience, instead of the educational composition of the occupation (Kalleberg, Mouw, and Schultz 2025). A career approach defines the STW by including all workers in STEM and technical occupations with educational attainment less than a BA degree.

I further improve on the measurement of the STW through the identification of occupations requiring STEM knowledge and technical skills. Previous studies have used score thresholds to identify occupations with high scores or scores that are 1.5 standard deviations above the median (Rothwell 2015; Chen 2021). However, an occupation may be in the middle of the distribution of occupations for STEM knowledge but use more STEM knowledge than other knowledge types (e.g. communication or business). From a career perspective, it is the high use of STEM knowledge and development of technical skills relative to other knowledge and skills and not the overall level among all occupations. Accordingly, I use calculate ratios of STEM knowledge to all knowledge categories and technical skills to all skills categories for each occupation using O*NET characteristics to identify occupations with high relative importance of STEM knowledge and technical skills.

I then use the American Community Survey (ACS) from 2004 to 2024 to identify workers with less than a BA working in occupations with high relative importance of STEM knowledge and technical skills over time who make up the STW from a career approach. The analysis investigates changes in the composition of this workforce over time by age, educational attainment, gender, race/ethnic, median wages, and regional dispersion. Preliminary results show that a career approach produces estimates of the STEM Skilled Technical Workforce that are 10 to 20 percent larger.

Author

• Michael A Schultz, University of Washington
  Presenting Author