NSF Report Shows National Inequality of High-Knowledge Workers

A new report by the National Science Foundation (NSF) portrays science and engineering employment in the United States as highly concentrated in a small number of states and metro areas. Most states reflected a lower S&E employment intensity than the United States as a whole. As noted in the report, the availability of a skilled workforce is an important predictor of a region’s population, productivity, and technological growth. A highly unequal distribution of creative economy workers leads to a highly unequal distribution of job creation and economic growth. A new report from McKinsey offers policy prescriptions for states and regions to grow their S&E workforce and boost their competitiveness within the knowledge economy. 

The NSF report uses demographic, social, and economic data from the 2011 ACS survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The data shows that in 2011, around 5.7 million S&E workers were employed across the United States. However, one in four workers either worked in California, Texas, or New York, the three states with the largest S&E worker population. And half of the total S&E worker population worked in just nine U.S. states, which also include Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, and Illinois.

States with a high number of S&E workers also have concentrations of S&E workers within in a small group of regions: Los Angeles, New York City, Houston, Denver, and San Diego had the highest percentages of S&E employment.  The report also documents the intensity of S&E workers within a state. The District of Columbia leads in the category, followed by Maryland, Massachusetts, Virginia, Colorado, and Washington.

The data reflects the effect of cluster development on the patterns of regional economic growth. Federal government jobs dominate the District of Columbia, Massachusetts is home to Boston’s thriving startup scene, Maryland and Northern Virginia are home to massive intelligence and defense industry clusters, and Washington state is home to the country’s largest aerospace cluster as well as a strong IT industry in the Seattle metro area.

A new report released by McKinsey, Game Changers: Five Opportunities for U.S. Growth and Renewal, suggests that the strongest opportunities for national economic growth come from investment in high-skill education that can drive our production of knowledge-intensive goods and services for international trade.  New industries will be created from unlocking the potential of Big Data and other new technologies. The report offers three policy prescriptions for investing in workforce training and development to boost regional growth and competitiveness: expanding apprenticeships and non-degree training programs; refashioning higher education curricula to match labor market expectations; and, boosting STEM education at all levels of education.