As we explored in our last post conventional wisdom about the value of a B.A. in obtaining a good-paying job and having a prosperous forty-year career is vastly underestimated. The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce calculates that 59 percent of today’s good-paying jobs require a B.A. and that will grow to 66 percent in 2031.

The stories that dominate the public conversation about the labor market are not only inaccurate in their portrayal of the value of a B.A. compared to sub B.A.credentials, but also in its description of which occupations provide the most good-paying jobs. Conventional wisdom has it that good-paying jobs are narrowly focused in the skilled trades and in STEM occupations. Not close to reality both today and tomorrow.

The reality is that there are a wide variety of good-paying jobs now and as projected by the Center on Education and the Workforce will be a decade from now. As you can see below, management is, by far, the occupation cluster with the most good-paying jobs. Computer and math occupations are the largest STEM occupation cluster and it ranks the seventh largest. The largest skilled trades occupation cluster is construction and extraction ranking eight.

In the Michigan Future analysis of good-paying jobs we pull out first-line supervisors from all the occupation groups. If you do that, the proportion of good-paying management jobs goes up substantially. We found that first-line supervisors are the largest good-paying jobs occupation among jobs that don’t require a B.A.

Here are the proportions of good-paying 2031 jobs by occupation in the Georgetown report. Only those occupations that have at least 3 percent of all good-paying jobs are listed. A far more diverse list of occupations than conventional wisdom.

• Management: 21%
• Business and finance: 9%
• Healthcare professional and technical 9%
• Education, training and library: 7%
• sales: 7%
• Office and administrative support: 7%
• Computer and math: 6%
• Construction and extraction 5%
• Transportation and materials moving: 4%
• Production: 4%
• Architecture and engineering: 3%
• Installation, maintenance and repair: 3%

How many parents and students do you think know that there are more good-paying jobs projected in 2031 in both sales and office and administrative support than either construction or computers?

If we’re serious––as we should be––about providing all students information about all good-paying occupations we will have to dramatically change the story we are telling them about what the labor market today and tomorrow looks like. We need a reality based story about a labor market where there are a wide variety of good-paying job opportunities. Where the path to a prosperous career is not narrowly focused on either a STEM degree or learning a skilled trade. And where a four-year degree in any major is the most reliable path to the middle class.

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This post answers the question “What are Michigan’s top ten upper middle class occupations?” Where we define upper middle class as jobs that pay at least $70,539. Our calculation of what it takes to be upper middle class for a three person household.

In 2019 there were 914,000 of those jobs out of a total of 4,344,000 Michigan payroll jobs.

The answer is:

1. Management: 160,000
2. Healthcare practitioners: 127,000
3. Business and finance: 100,000
4. Architecture and engineering: 94,000
5. Computer and mathematical: 65,000
6. Educational instruction and library: 61,000
7. Sales: 60,000
8. Office and administrative support: 44,000
9. Production: 43,000
10. Construction and extractive: 30,000

What big picture lessons about today’s Michigan labor market can we learn from this list?

• First and foremost is the paucity of Michigan jobs, even in a robust economy, that are high-wage jobs. Only 21 percent of Michigan payroll jobs paid upper middle class wages for a three person household in the full-employment 2019 Michigan economy.
• High-wage jobs are predominately in occupations that require a four-year degree. The first six of our top ten upper middle class occupations are in major occupation where most jobs require a B.A. Those six major occupations account for 66 percent of all Michigan’s upper middle class jobs. 607,000 of 914,000 upper middle class jobs.
• As we have detailed previously, STEM occupations do not dominate high-wage jobs. Of the top ten major occupations, three are in STEM fields: healthcare practitioners; architecture and engineering; and computer and mathematical.
• Blue collar occupations don’t dominate high-paid work. Only the ninth and tenth of our top ten are blue collar occupations. They don’t even dominate the major occupations that don’t require a four-year degree. Of the four top ten major occupations that don’t require a four-year degree, the top two (sales and office and administrative support) are not in the trades.
• Given Michigan’s history, it is surprising––even shocking––that only 43,000 high-paid Michigan jobs are in blue-collar factory work. About 1% of all Michigan jobs.

A final word about what these data represent. They are for payroll jobs only and for full-time equivalent jobs only. So earnings from self employment and/or gig jobs are not included. Neither is overtime pay or any bonuses workers receive. Even with those limitations, these data provide a good description of what employers pay workers by occupation. And of today’s labor market realities.

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In recent posts we have been exploring payroll jobs wages by occupation and education. Dividing the labor market into occupations with median wages below the national median of $39,810, occupations with median wages between the national median and the 75 percentile of $64,230, and what we call high-paid occupations with median wages at or above the 75th percentile.

The first post, The truth about the relationship between education and earnings, in this series summarized how many jobs were in each of the three categories: low-paid, middle-paid and high-paid occupations. Then we focused on the proportion of good-paying jobs in STEM occupations and blue collar occupations.

In this post we will identify which are the high-paid occupations groups. The previous posts have been based on data from the more than 800 occupations identified by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. BLS divides those 800 occupations into 22 occupational groups. In this post we want to discover which of those occupational groups have a median wage above the national 75th percentile.

There are six of these high-paid occupations groups:

• Management Occupations
• Business and Financial Operations Occupations
• Computer and Mathematical Occupations
• Architecture and Engineering Occupations
• Legal Occupations
• Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations

Combined they have employed 991,000 Michiganders in 2019. 23 percent of the 4.344 million payroll jobs in 2019. Employment in each is:

• Management Occupations: 211,000
• Business and Financial Operations Occupations: 220,000
• Computer and Mathematical Occupations: 112,000
• Architecture and Engineering Occupations: 140,000
• Legal Occupations: 26,000
• Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations: 280,000

Median wages in these high-paid occupations groups ranges from $101,850 in Management Occupations, which is far and away the highest paid occupation group, to $66,030 in Business and Financial Operations Occupations. Specifically median wages in each of the high-paid occupations groups are:

• Management Occupations: $101,850
• Business and Financial Operations Occupations: $66,030
• Computer and Mathematical Occupations: $76,980
• Architecture and Engineering Occupations: $83,030
• Legal Occupations: $72,050
• Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations: $66,600

The best portrayal of high-paid occupations comes from an analysis of the more than 800 occupations. In addition to our analysis, you can check out information on each occupation at the state’s Pathfinder website.

You will, of course, find high-paid occupations that are not in these six occupation groups. And you find some of the occupations in these six are not high-paid.

What this look at high-paid occupations groups does provide is a snapshot of today’s labor market realities. Many contrary to conventional wisdom. The reality is that high-paid jobs are predominantly professional and managerial. Work done pre-pandemic in offices, schools and hospitals. And most in occupations where at least a four-year degree is required. Also these high-paid jobs are not limited to STEM occupations. The bottom line is that, although there are no guarantees, the most reliable path to a good-paying job and forty-year career is obtaining a four-year degree irrespective of major or field.

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The preeminent path to good-paying careers looks more like rock climbing than climbing a career ladder. More ad hoc and non linear than predictable and linear.

What makes successful careers for most of us are our second and third jobs, not our first. And second and third job skills tend to be very different than first job skills. For most what gets you a promotion is a combination of rock climbing with a liberal arts base.

Phi Beta Kappa recently hosted a panel of career rock climbers in a wide variety of professional and managerial occupations moderated by George Anders, the author of the terrific book You Can Do Anything: The surprising power of the “useless liberal arts education. The description by the panelists (none of them white males) of their career paths is really worth watching.

As I watched the panel it struck me that their descriptions of how they put together successful careers is a story high school and college students, particularly those from non-affluent households, never hear. And yet the path the panelists are taking is now the preeminent path to good-paying careers.

At the very least, the story we are telling others’ kids that you need to go into STEM or the skilled-trades is way too narrow. The reality is that today’s high-paid jobs are concentrated in a wide variety of professional and managerial occupations, a majority of which are not in STEM fields.

But even for those in STEM-related occupations, the liberal arts are essential to their career path. Two of the four panelists are in STEM fields, but with a liberal arts education. And if you listen to them the liberal arts skills are, at least, as important to their success as their STEM skills. 

This, of course, is consistent with Google’s research findings that the most important characteristics of their most successful employees are all so-called soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas.

The panelists career paths are also consistent with Harvard’s David Demings findings that:

The advantage for STEM (science, technology, engineering and
mathematics) majors fades steadily after their first jobs, and by
age 40 the earnings of people who majored in fields like social
science or history have caught up. … Although liberal arts majors start slow, they gradually catch up to their peers in STEM fields. This is by design. A liberal arts education fosters valuable “soft skills” like problem-solving, critical thinking and adaptability. Such skills are hard to quantify, and they don’t create clean pathways to high-paying first jobs. But they have long-run value in a wide variety of careers.

Demings’ “problem-solving, critical thinking and adaptability” have clearly been far more important to the career success of the four panelists than technical first-job skills. It’s not that those first-job, occupation-specific skills don’t matter, but they are not the foundation skills for a good-paying career.

The foundation skills are increasingly generalist skills, not specialists skills. The ability to spot and take advantage of opportunities––many times with a different employer and/or in a different field––combined with the ability to work with, problem solve with, create with and lead people that don’t look like you and don’t think like you

We need to figure out a way to get stories like those of the four panelists and this pathway in front of non-affluent students. If we don’t, we are taking off the table for them the path to many of the good-paying jobs of today and tomorrow.

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Michigan’s Bureau of Labor Market Information and Strategic Initiatives recently released their 2018-2028 employment projections by occupation and industry.

Also released was their Michigan’s Hot 50 Job Outlook Through 2028. Which lists the 50 occupations over the next decade that most combine high demand and high wages. High wage in this case means an occupation with median wages above the state median full-time wage of about $38,500.

The hot 50 jobs list tells the overall story of the projections pretty well: 38 of the 50 occupations require a four-year degree, 7 of the 50 are in STEM occupations, 7 of the 50 are in the skilled trades

The basic story of the job openings projections is:

1. A preponderance of openings are in low-wage, low-education-requirement (high school or less) occupations.
2. The preponderance of good-paying jobs are in occupations requiring a four-year degree.
3. Good-paying jobs are in occupations much broader than the skilled trades or STEM fields. 

These projections, of course, tell of a far different reality than we have been told over and over by far too many of our business and political elites. As we have explored previously (see here and here), their story that there are lots of good-jobs that don’t require a four-year degree is not accurate. As is their story that good-paying jobs are narrowly concentrated in STEM occupations and the skilled trades.

The hot 50 jobs list tells well the story we should be telling everyone about labor market realities today and tomorrow. Most importantly, that the most reliable path to a good-paying forty-year career is getting a four-year degree in any field, not just in STEM.

Are there good-paying jobs and careers that don’t require a four-year degree? Of course. But far fewer than conventional wisdom has it. And that those good-paying non four-year degree jobs include non skilled-trades occupations.

The hot 50 jobs list is well aligned with our research findings on good-paying Michigan jobs. Using a slightly different classification of education requirement by occupation, and a much higher bar to be a good-paying job, as the pie chart below illustrates, we found that more than three-quarters of employment in good-paying occupations required a four-year degree or more. And that most of the good-paying jobs that did not require a four-year degree were in jobs you got through promotion, rather than technical occupational skills including, but not limited, to the trades.

For those of you wanting to learn more about specific occupations the best place to start is the state’s pathfinder website. There you can find out about pay, projected job openings and education requirements for hundreds of occupations.

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All of a sudden there is lots being written about the trend of employers hiring generalists more than specialists. What is so disturbing is the disconnect between this reality and way too many policymakers pushing our education and training providers towards preparing students for a trade or profession.

In a world where generalists are what increasingly is being rewarded, the emphasis on occupation-specific skills in our education and training systems is not good for either students or the economy. Knowing coding or welding or accounting is not what matters most to having a successful 40-year career. All of those occupation skills have a shorter and shorter half life. It’s not that knowing how to code, weld or do accounting is irrelevant to getting a job today, it is those are the icing on the cake career-ready skills not the foundation skills. 

Two recent books detail this trend towards generalists: Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. And How to Win in a Winner-Take-All World, by New York Times economic columnist Neil Irwin. Both highly recommended.

Fatherly has an article about Range entitled Why Parents Should Raise Kids to be Generalists, not Specialists. But maybe the best place to start is an Atlantic article written by Jerry Useem entitled At Work, Expertise is Falling Out of Favor. For those who prefer listening to reading, there is a terrific NPR podcast which starts with Useem’s article.

All of these books, articles and podcast make clear that what employers value now–and, almost certainly, will even more going forward––are generalists, those with broad, rigorous, non-occupation specific skills.

As readers of this blog know, we think the best description of those skills are the 6Cs from the book Becoming Brilliant. Collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creativity and confidence.

This trend of employers preferring generalists is consistent with Google’s findings that STEM skills were not the defining characteristic of their most successfully employees. Of the focus groups we did on the path those without a four-year degree took to get jobs paying at least $40,000 a year. Of Heather McGowan’s framing of losing job skills being the operating system, a job skills the apps. And of George Anders’ findings of the value of a liberal arts degree.

My summary of all these writings about future work: All of us will need generalist skills––no matter what our first job/occupation is––and most of us, at least for a first job, will need some specialist skills. But where we have gotten off track, across the board in education and training, is which are the foundation skills. To use Heather McGowan’s terrific analogy the generalist skills are the operating system we all need; the specialist skills are the apps  (with a shorter and shorter half life). So it is not either/or but both/and for most of us, but where the most important 40-year-career-ready skills are the 6Cs/generalist skills.

To make matters worse too many of us are telling parents and kids that the only path to prosperity is to be a specialist in the trades or STEM. Which is not supported when you look at today’s data, let alone what is likely to happen in the future. So our messaging even narrows the fields where one can do well as a specialist.

The other reality of all this emphasis on learn a trade or profession is that it completely misses the reality that most of us got to where we are today through our second and third jobs, not the first. It is the promotion job that makes one prosperous for most.  And that for most our first job specialist skills were not what got us the promotion jobs. It was the generalist skills.

If, as all these readings say, increasingly rigorous generalist skills are what the labor market most demands––rather than learning a trade or profession–– we need to rethink completely what we mean by career ready and to redefine our definition of career-ready skills. This is the core of the education policy debate we need to be having.

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The article describes the bottom line this way: General Motors is a technology company that makes cars and the skills its employees had yesterday are continuously becoming outdated.

The article continues with quotes from Marick Masters, professor of business at Wayne State University:

“Technology has changed so fast and is changing so fast that if you’ve been out of school 10 or 20 years, you’re not at the leading edge anymore,” said Masters. … “I don’t know if they’re extinct or need a new degree, but they need to be engaged in continued learning and advancement,” said Masters. “They need to be agile. Organizations do not guarantee lifetime employment anymore. This is a statement that the world is changing.”

The “new” GM will want workers who are highly creative and capable of working autonomously as well as collaboratively, Masters said. The future employee will take initiative and have a strong technology background, good communication skills and project-management capability. GM might do more contract hiring to keep fixed costs low and GM’s agility high, he said.

Research by David Deming and Kadeem Noray demonstrates that what veteran GM engineers are experiencing is common for those with STEM degree. They write:

This paper presents new evidence on the life-cycle returns to STEM education. We show that the economic payoff to majoring in applied STEM fields such as engineering and computer science is initially very high, but declines by more than 50 percent in the first decade after college. STEM majors have flatter age-earnings profiles than college graduates who major in other subjects, even after controlling for cognitive ability and other important determinants of earnings.

The need, first and foremost, to be able to constantly adjust to the changing nature of work in order to have a good-paying forty-year career is not limited to GM engineers or more broadly those with a degree in a STEM field. The reality is none of us have a clue what the jobs and occupations of the future will be. Today’s jobs are not a good indicator of what jobs will be available when today’s K-12 students finish their careers in the 2050s or 2060s. We simply don’t know how smarter and smarter machines are going to change labor markets.

Who knows when autonomous vehicles will replace truck drivers; software, not healthcare professionals, will do diagnostics; software, not financial advisors, will provide us with investment advice; machines will move materials in warehouses; on and on and on. But it is a matter of when, not if, much work now done by humans will be done by smarter and smarter machines.

Its not that work will disappear but that most of us are going to have to be able to adapt and learn new skills to be able to have successful forty-year careers. That requires a transformation in our system of lifelong learning and how we support people as they transition from one occupation to the next and more and more of us are contingent workers. So the purpose of pre K-12 education (maybe even pre K-16) is to build foundation skills that allow all Michigan children to have the agility and ability to constantly switch occupations – to be successful rock climbers.

The best definition we have found for this complex set of skills comes from the book Becoming Brilliant, by learning scientists Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, who label these skills the six Cs:

• Collaboration, the ability to work and play well with others, which encompasses a wide range of soft skills necessary for success in the modern workplace;
• Communication, the ability to effectively get your point across and back it up with evidence, both verbally and in writing, and the ability to listen and be empathetic;
• Content, deep understanding and a broad base of knowledge in a range of subject areas, rather than simply surface knowledge of reading and math skills;
• Critical Thinking, the ability to sift through mountains of information and get a sense of what’s valuable and not and to solve unanticipated and unpredictable problems;
• Creativity, the ability to put information together in new ways;
• Confidence, which encompasses capacities like grit, perseverance, and a willingness to take risks.

These are the foundation skills that all of us need, no matter what first job/occupation we decide to pursue after we finish our education.

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Lets look at data to see if that conventional wisdom aligns with today’s Michigan labor market. Using the American Community Survey we looked at employment and median wages by occupational cluster in Michigan in 2014. They break occupations down into five broad categories:

• Management, business, science and arts occupations
• Service occupations
• Sales and office occupations
• Natural resources, construction and maintenance occupations
• Production, transportation and material moving occupations

The first category being predominantly professionals and managers. The occupations where those with a bachelors degree or more are heavily concentrated. Although technical occupations in fields like health and IT are included in this cluster as well. The services occupations includes police and fire protection which most would think of as more like the professional and manager cluster rather than the low wage, low skill service fields––healthcare support; food prep and serving; cleaning and maintenance; and personal care and services––they are included with.

Lets look at employment first. Below are the total employment and full time year round employment for each of the five occupational clusters. There are 4,448,000 employed Michiganders. 2,914,000 (65 percent) of them working full time year round.

• Management, business, science and arts occupations: 1,568,000 total employment; 1,175,000 full time year round
• Service occupations: 798,000 total employment; 350,000 full time year round
• Sales and office occupations: 1,024,000 total employment; 628,000 full time year round
• Natural resources, construction and maintenance occupations: 349,000 total employment; 247,000 full time year round
• Production, transportation and material moving occupations: 708,000 total employment; 513,000 full time year round

The proportion of full time year round workers is as follows:

• Management, business, science and arts occupations: 40.3%
• Service occupations: 12.0%
• Sales and office occupations: 21.6%
• Natural resources, construction and maintenance occupations: 8.5%
• Production, transportation and material moving occupations: 17.6%

Now lets look at pay. The median wage for all Michigan full time year round workers is $43,685. Median wages for year round full time workers by occupational cluster are:

• Management, business, science and arts occupations: $61,674
• Service occupations: $25,920
• Sales and office occupations: $36,559
• Natural resources, construction and maintenance occupations: $43,386
• Production, transportation and material moving occupations: $36,598

The last two clusters best capture the blue collar occupations that historically were the core of Michigan’s middle class. They now account for 26.1 percent of Michigan full time year round jobs. (23.8 percent of all jobs). Median wages are below the median for all full time year round Michigan workers. Around $20,000 a year lower than those in management, business, science and arts occupations.

Since manufacturing is so emphasized in our conversations about the economy and politics, its worth highlighting that there are now 337,000 full time year round production workers with a median wage of $36,598. Nearly $7,000 below the median wage for all Michigan full time year round workers. Production workers are 11.6 percent of Michigan’s full time year round workers and 9.6 percent of all workers.

Finally, what about STEM occupations? There are 258,000 computer, engineering and science workers; 219,000 working full time year round. The median wage for those full time year round workers is $72,442. Healthcare practitioner and technical occupations have 187,000 workers; 131,000 full time year round. The median wage for those full time year round workers is $67,089.

Combined these two sub clusters are a good proxy for STEM workers in the Michigan economy. They are high wage occupations. Combined they account for 12.0 percent of Michigan’s full time year round workers. (Ten percent of all Michigan workers.) And 28.3 percent of full time year round workers in all management, business, science and arts occupations.

The non STEM management, business, science and arts occupations employ 825,00 full time year round workers. With median wages by sub cluster of:

• Management, business and financial occupations: $64,292
• Education, legal, community service, arts, and media occupations: $51,921

The data are clear: Yes STEM occupations have the highest wages and employ lots of Michiganders. But there are far more jobs in non STEM professional and managerial occupations and they are high wage too.

Although it is masked in this data, of course, there are good paying occupations that don’t require a four year degree. But far fewer and at lower median wages than conventional wisdom would have it. The new reality is that the mass middle class in Michigan and America today and, almost certainly, more so in the future, are professionals and managers in all fields. And that getting a four year degree is the most reliable path––no guarantees––to those good paying jobs.

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The two studies demolish what passes for conventional wisdom on job creation in post Great Recession America. First and foremost, it is not true that we have too many with four year degrees.  From December 2007 (the month the Great Recession began) through September 2015 the economy has added 2.6 million jobs. Who are getting those jobs? Overwhelmingly those with a four year degree or more.

Employment of those with bachelors degrees is up 8.1 million. Employment for those with some college or an associates degree is up 700,000. For those with a high school degree or less employment is down by 6.3 million.  You read that right: Basically all the net new jobs for the past eight years are going to those with a four year degree or more. So if you look at what employers are doing––not what they and their political and media allies are saying––they are demanding and hiring most those with four year degrees.

For those who believe––its not true––that the American economy is different since the end of the Great Recession, the Center on Education and the Workforce details what has happened to employment since the end of the Great Recession. From 2010 (the year after the Great Recession) through 2014, the economy has added 6.6 million net new jobs. Of those 2.9 million are good-paying jobs with wages of more than $53,000 compared to 1.9 million middle-wage jobs ($32,000-53,000) and 1.8 million low-paying jobs (less than $32,000). So much for the conventional wisdom that the predominance of new jobs since the end of the Great Recession are low pay/low skill.

And who are getting those good-paying jobs? Those with four year degrees of more. Of the 2.9 million high-wage net new jobs since the end of the Great Recession 2.8 million went to those with a bachelors degree, 152,00 to those with some college or associates degree and 39,000 fewer with a high school degree or less now have a good-paying job.

The net new jobs for those with a bachelors degree is up 1.3 million in middle wage jobs and 756,000 in low wage jobs. So yes the economy has added some low-wage jobs that are being filled by those with a four year degree or more. But only 756,000 out of more than 4.85 million net new jobs for those with a bachelors degree. For those with some college or an associates degree (which includes those with an occupational certificate) in addition to the increase of 152,000 in high wage jobs, there are 827,000 more in middle wage jobs and nearly 1.2 million in low wage jobs. Not exactly the story we are told over and over again that you can earn as much today with an occupational certificate or associates degree as with a four year degree.

(It is true that some of those in the some college category don’t have either an associated degree or occupational certificate. It is almost certain that those without a credential are working less and earning less than those with a credential. But if the data allowed you to take out those without at least a certificate, it would not change the reality that those with a four year degree or more are doing best in post Great Recession America.)

Finally what about the conventional wisdom that the only four year degrees worth pursuing economically are in STEM fields? Since the end of the Great Recession the economy has added 881,000 high-wage jobs in STEM occupations and another 445,000 for health care professionals and technicians. That is a little more than 1.3 million of the 2.9 million net new good-paying jobs. Nearly 1.8 million net new high-wage jobs were in a category called managerial and professional office. The kind of jobs filled largely by liberal arts and business majors. (Blue collar occupations lost 71,000 and education occupations lost 184,000 good-paying jobs.) So much for there aren’t any new high-wage jobs in non STEM fields!

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One problem: we may not have a shortage of scientists. In two terrific articles the Atlantic’s Jordan Weissman explores the labor market for those earning Ph.Ds in science. Entitled “The Ph.D Bust: America’s Awful Market for Young Scientists” you can find them here and here. Worth reading!

Weissman writes: “In brief, we keep graduating more doctoral students in subjects like engineering, biology, computer science, and mathematics, and progressively fewer of them seem to be finding work by the time they have a diploma. The overwhelming majority (of) these bright minds probably land good jobs eventually, but the chilly hiring environment seems to undercut the idea the U.S. is suffering from an overall shortage of scientists.”

Weissman reports of those American citizens earning a Ph.D in engineering 43.7% had a job when they graduated, 27.7% were going on for further study and 28.5% had nothing. In the physical sciences it is 32.3% had a job when they graduated, 40.7% were going on for further study and 27.0% had nothing. In the life sciences it is 21.7% had a job when they graduated, 42.6% were going on for further study and 35.8% had nothing. (For the foreign born those who had a job in each category is substantially smaller than American citizens.)

As Weissman concludes: “Politicians and businessmen are fond of talking about America’s scientist shortage — the dearth of engineering and lab talent that will inevitably leave us sputtering in the global economy. But perhaps it’s time they start talking about our scientist surplus instead. … Most (of) these Ph.D.’s will eventually find work — and probably decently compensated work at that. After all, the unemployment rate for those with even a college degree is under 4 percent, and in 2008, science and engineering doctorate holders up to three years out of school had just 1.5 percent unemployment. But next time you hear a politician talking about our lack of science talent, remember all those young aerospace engineers, chemists, physicists who will still be casting around for a gig after they’re handed a diploma. There’s no great shortage to speak of.” (Emphasis added.)

Does the labor market long term need more scientists? Almost certainly. Is it a good long term investment to get a college degree in science? Almost certainly. But what is far less clear is if the demand for scientists over the long term is greater than the demand for those in non STEM professions or that the return on investment over the long term is going to be greater for those with science degrees compared to those with liberal arts and/or other professional degrees. A good reason to keep government out of the business of picking occupation winners and losers.

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