The STEM skills gap cacophony: Why industry bodies and social scientists observe the same labor market and reach totally different conclusions

Talk by Aashish Mehta, Associate Professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a CNS UCSB Seed Grant recipient

Industry groups complain bitterly of shortages of workers with science, technology, engineering and mathematical training. Many social scientists seeking evidence of this shortage often insist that they cannot find it in nationally representative surveys. Using semi-structured interviews of nanotech-related employers, the researchers on this project – including Stacey Frederick (Duke University) and Rachel Parker (Mowat Centre, University of Toronto) seek to understand the reasons for this skills gap cacophony. Results so far suggest that it is explained primarily by an inability to measure skills in social science surveys, insufficient clarity on who is an American worker (immigration can both create and plug a gap in the US engineering labor force) and a failure by industry groups to distinguish between gaps on the extensive margin (we need more workers trained in X) and gaps on the intensive margin (we need a few workers who are better trained in X). While dramatic increases in the number of workers trained in STEM fields, broadly defined, therefore seem unnecessary, there are indications that firms suffer shortages of workers with particular skills. These skills have three features in common: (1) they are associated with the realization of engineering designs, rather than with the capacity to design; (2) they are applicable in a narrow range of industries, so that investing in them is a high-risk, high-return endeavor for workers; and (3) they are expensive to teach. Thus, they may be a consequence as much as a cause of the decline in manufacturing employment.