Report Says U.S. has Too Many Scientists but Not Enough Jobs
A recent report from the Washington Post finds that there are too many scientists living in the United States with too few jobs despite bipartisan support for increased immigration for foreign nationals with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The report finds that some high-tech areas are booming, while jobs in many other fields, including biology, chemistry, and medicine, are scarce.
The Washington Post report notes that while many highly-trained individuals are employed, many are not working in their field. This is consistent with research from the Center for Immigration Studies, which has found that 1.8 million engineers are either unemployed or working in a field other than engineering.
"They’ll be employed in something," Michael S. Teitelbaum, a senior adviser to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation who studies the scientific workforce told the Washington Post. "But they go and do other things because they can’t find the position they spent their 20s preparing for."
The Post also found that U.S. drug firms, which used to produce high-paying, stable research positions, have cut 300,000 jobs since 2000.
"It's been a bloodbath, it’s been awful," Kim Haas, who spent 20 years designing pharmaceuticals for drug giants Wyeth and Sanofi-Aventis and is in her early 50s, told the Post. "Scads and scads and scads of people [have been cut]. Very good chemists with PhDs from Stanford can’t find jobs."
According to the American Chemical Society, the unemployment rate among chemists is at a 40-year high at 4.6% and only 38% of new PhD chemists were employed in 2011.
For more information, see the Washington Post and the Center for Immigration Studies. Also, see our TV ad that's running across the country asking Congress why they want to bring in more high-tech workers when 1.8 million engineers can't find work in engineering.