“If there was really a STEM labor market crisis, you’d be seeing very different behaviors from companies,” notes Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in New York state. “You wouldn’t see companies cutting their retirement contributions, or hiring new workers and giving them worse benefits packages. Instead you would see signing bonuses, you’d see wage increases. You would see these companies really training their incumbent workers.”
“None of those things are observable,” Hira says. “In fact, they’re operating in the opposite way.”
And even if there was, the notion that NASA would help it is ludicrous. Particularly if anyone thinks it’s going to do so by building rockets to nowhere.
It sounds like there’s an employer shortage.
Actually is global economics. Why paid a huge salary for an American engineer or scientist when you are able hire a half dozen for the same price in India? Or China? Why do you think all the big three auto makers have built new research labs in China while down sizing in the U.S.? Because they are able to do the work for a fraction of what it would cost in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the high level of government funding overseas, compared to the declining federal funding in the U.S. makes it attractive for U.S. scientists to move overseas.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/29/sequestration-scientists_n_3825128.html
Sam Stein
Nearly 20 Percent Of Scientists Contemplate Moving Overseas Due In Part To Sequestration
Posted: 08/29/2013 7:30 am EDT
Updated: 08/30/2013 1:48 pm EDT
[[[WASHINGTON — New data compiled by a coalition of top scientific and medical research groups show that a large majority of scientists are receiving less federal help than they were three years ago, despite spending far more time writing grants in search of it. Nearly one-fifth of scientists are considering going overseas to continue their research because of the poor funding climate in America.]]]
Add to that the hostility some political groups have towards federal scientists and federal support for science. And is it any wonder? Kids today are aware of the world and they recognize they would be fools to waste their time studying in any of the STEM fields.
Economics determine demand for STEM just as anything else. If you want more students going into STEM fields than increase the demand for STEM professionals, don’t reduce it.
Hiring people in China likely wasn’t because they were cheaper but because it was conditional of those companies being allowed to sell products there.
Yea, sure. The get all the engineers they want , 10 cents on the dollar, and you claim they are doing it because the Chinese government is forcing them to save money? What a laugh!
You really don’t understand capitalism, do you?
Sorry to ruin your story but auto makers were forced to locate parts of their operations in China in order to open up the market.
Also, I suspect that our budget, even with some incredibly small cuts, still dwarfs the budgets of all other countries when it comes to putting STEMers to work. At least that is what your article says,
“”Globally, the United States invests more real dollars in research and development than any other country,” the study notes. ”
Doesn’t seem like moving out of the states will lead to greener pastures.
Wodun,
Evidence? or another urban legend the Tea Party promotes…
Tom
Part is being close to your customers, it’s hard to design a good car for china or india in detroit. Same Reason Toyota moved their US Design shops to LA.
Easier to understand the customers.
Now some stuff, you definitely get more engineering value, but you also create a real problem. if global wages determine american wages, there will be no middle class. If an american engineer has to compete for wages with a shack in india, then the work moves overseas, and sure an engineer can drive a taxi,
but a taxidriver won’t be buying a cadillac.
the other problem is you move the engineers and the manufacturing to china, what’s that leave in the US? Advertising and marketing. What keeps Foxconn from hiring a good us based design studio, and a Madison avenue ad firm,
and moving into their own brands. LG? they went from nobody to big time. HTC? same thing. The Japanese penetrated the US market, China is following.
The Big American Electronics companies of the 50-70’s died. GE, Zenith, RCA.
Apple is big but they make nothing in the US. Dell, very little US base.
We have very few US industries that are globally dominant. We also have very few middle class people. My dad could raise a family in a nice suburb, with 3 kids, a stay at home wife, on an line engineers salary in 1968.
How many people can do that today, as an Engineer 2 in a major city?
dcguy,
Now you get it. In a global economy work goes to where the wages are lowest. It doesn’t matter if you are hiring a lawyer in India to do research on a case for a U.S. law firm, or an engineer designing a car. Or an astronomer to run a telescope in Chile. Its all about the bottom line.
And when you have a country that inhibits the inflow of labor like the U.S. the work will go also overseas. I saw that first hand with a feedlot in Texas near Eagle Pass. When it became hard to hire Mexicans to work in it the owner just opened up a new one in Mexico and imported the beef into the U.S.
well its a mess either way, you import mexican labor who work for less then minimum wage or you import mexican beef or you close the market.
europe closed their markets
dcguy,
Yes, there is no easy solution when you try to defy the reality of economics.
The US has an abundance of overtrained know-it-alls. NASA does a great job encouraging the creation of more.
The Finance community exported 30 million manufacturing jobs to
China and then got Reagan to talk about a “Service Economy”.
Hasn’t worked out well.
And all of those thousands of regulations enacted by the EPA, OSHA and the alphabet soup of government regulatory agencies had nothing to do with manufacturing jobs, right? Drive up the cost of doing business in the US and companies will relocate to lower cost places to do business.
West, Texas has chosen to have a regulation free environment.
I hear property is real cheap there.
Beijing has chosen to have a regulation free environment there too.
How’s the Air Quality in Beijing today?
dcguy,
I lived and worked in West Texas. Its cheap because there is no water, not even if you drill for it. I knew a number of ranchers that had to haul it from the nearest public utility in barrels. You poor mobile phone service and Internet access. If you are not in town you will need to get electricity from a generator. Its often a hundred miles between open gas stations, even on the Interstate. And most importantly, few jobs. And the land is so poor you need acres and acres to support a single steer.
I think he was referring to the explosion in the town of West, Texas rather than the region known as West Texas. Of course, statists like to believe that if they perfect the processes and create ever more regulations then bad things will never happen. They’re foolish that way.
I concur with your description of West Texas. Driving there, I saw land so barren that you’d think a cow would have to eat at a full trot to find enough grass to feed itself. Other than 29 Palms Marine base, it’s the most desolate landscape I’ve seen since the Apollo moon landings.
Larry,
Try rural Nevada, its even more desolate 🙂
West, Texas has chosen to have a regulation free environment.
I hear property is real cheap there.
I see you hold some beliefs that you didn’t reason yourself into. I won’t bother to reason you out of them. I’ll just note that the fertilizer plant that blew up was regulated meaning your argument is just wrong.
Moving on, sometimes government agencies get a temporary waiver from environmental regulations. It’s interesting what they try when that happens.
For example, I live in Yellowstone National Park and there were a few relatively serious fires last month. The National Park Service put in a fire line (a cleared zone of trees) around some building complexes that had been threatened by fire. Most of that effort happened after the fires had died down substantially following a series of rainstorms. But they took advantage of a good crisis and temporary suspension of regulation to get that zone set up without requiring the usual environmental colonoscopic examination.
If they had tried that last year, they’d still be in the middle of the paperwork to get it approved much less start on it. But hey, look there’s a fire!
This is a result of the brave new world of heavy regulation. Wait for an emergency and then ruthlessly exploit the waiver while nobody is looking. Because otherwise you won’t get anything done.
When I visited Yellowstone last year, I was amazed at the amount of dead wood lying around. They might as well have added large stockpiles of gunpowder and gasoline to the mix. If they have another big fire like the one about 20 years ago, I don’t see how they could possibly stop it with all that fuel lying around. Apparently, they plan on letting nature take its course.
Larry, that’s why they let nature run its course now. It’s worth noting that they have a light fire season this year. The current fires burned less than 1% of the park (maybe more like 0.5%). But that helps use up some of the fuel and break up stands of fuel (for example, one of the fires will offer considerable protection to the Lake Yellowstone Hotel area for decades to come).
And while all that downed fuel burns, it burns relatively slowly. As I understand it, the primary problem is that with lots of fuel on the ground it can get hot enough to sustain fast spreading crown fires.
” I’ll just note that the fertilizer plant that blew up was regulated”
what reg said it was mandatory to put a nursing home and school in the blast zone of the plant?
I don’t hear you offering to move next door to a refinery in texas.
As Karl said, your argument is just wrong:
what reg said it was mandatory to put a nursing home and school in the blast zone of the plant?
Karl, et al; are arguing for fewer regulations, so they are not the one promoting regulations.
There is no regulation mandating nursing homes and schools be put next to hazardous plants.
Why would you want such a regulation?
Perhaps you should take Karl’s advice and move on. Maybe to another subject you know something about since you have yet to discuss one thing associated with Rand’s original topic.
Leland,
I think he is referring to zoning laws, something that tends to be lacking in many Texas towns. BTW zoning laws are what prevents someone from putting a garbage dump, oops, I mean recycling plant, next to the home you lived in for 40 years driving down its value. Or a bikers bar across from a school. 🙂
what reg said it was mandatory to put a nursing home and school in the blast zone of the plant?
That sounds bad. I think I won’t advocate for that regulation.
I don’t hear you offering to move next door to a refinery in texas.
I don’t see the reason to do so. I don’t live or work in Texas. So it wouldn’t be useful for me to do so. I’ve lived near somewhat dangerous public nuisances before, such as busy highways, farms, railroads, high crime areas, flood-prone areas, etc. I would rather live near a refinery than a high crime area – the risks are better.
And all of those thousands of regulations enacted by the EPA, OSHA and the alphabet soup of government regulatory agencies had nothing to do with manufacturing jobs, right? Drive up the cost of doing business in the US and companies will relocate to lower cost places to do business. And the migration of US manufacturing jobs overseas started in the 1970s before Reagan took office.
Microsoft consistently whines about not having enough American computer science grads. But they use that as an excuse to get more cheap, foreign labor.
.. and if you’ve ever had to sort through the resumes of US programmers, you’d know why. The US is not the only country in the world that plays the “do you even know how to program?” game when interviewing programmers, but it’s certainly the most celebrated.
Along the same lines. My dad retired after 30+ years at IBM programming test equipment (low level proprietary machine code and C). After a year or two of recovery from heart surgery, he though that he could pick up a side projects like maybe do some part time programming. So he floats his resume, short version: “Programmer 30+ years experience, BA Mathematics” the response was “We only except applications from people with BS in Computer Science” My dad was programming before they HAD Computer Science, Heck he was programming before the invention of Fortran. He could probably teach a PhD course on test programming in any language you choose, but because he doesn’t “know” Java Script, companies wouldn’t touch him.
Regardless of whether the grammatical error was in the original rejection letter, or introduced by the author of this comment, “We only except applications from people with BS in Computer Science” pretty much hits the nail on the head as far as the argument in the article. If the country is full of people who can code but have issues with “their/they’re/there”, “accept/except”, “your/you’re”, “than/then”, etc., the result is that we aren’t any better off we were before we started the STEM push.
Also, if one is unable to code in a modern language, it doesn’t matter how much experience one has; the skill set isn’t marketable to companies who use a modern language. Java and JavaScript are completely different, and someone who can code in C may not be able to code in C++ or C#, even if they understand the concept of object-oriented programming.
A corollary is a mechanic who can tune a carbureted vehicle to optimal performance in their sleep but has no working knowledge of modern fuel injection systems; the chances of said mechanic getting a job in a modern dealership service bay are probably next to none.
The article addresses this issue, too, inasmuch as it talks about STEM professionals whose employers no longer pony up for continuing-education like they once did.
It’s a good article, you really ought to RTWT.
While object-oriented programming makes up the vast majority of code being produced today, there’s still a need for people with the skills to produce low-level procedural code for things like operating system kernels and device drivers. Those are often coded in assembly language or C.
and someone who can code in C may not be able to code in C++ or C#
I doubt such a person exists. It’s not that hard to go from C programming to similar languages. And there’s a lot of other similar languages including Java, Javascript, Perl, and Python.
I doubt such a person exists.
I don’t know. Some people had a hard time making the transition from procedural to object-oriented programming. It’s a fundamentally different approach to programming. However, the reverse may also be true. If you need someone to write some low-level device driver or kernel code, a programmer who has only worked in a language like C++, C# or Java might not be able to do the job. I used to work with some device driver programmers who developed code for disk arrays and high end graphics cards. From what they told me, it’s a highly specialized skill. Even things that shouldn’t make a difference (like removing a seemingly unnecessary NOP instruction) often turned out to have significant results.
When I programmed for a living, I was always having to learn new languages, operating systems and APIs. It’s part of the job. Learning a new language was usually the easiest. Some managers may believe that an older programmer wouldn’t be able to keep up with the changes. That may be correct for some people but not for others.
Over the last 100 years, US kids test scores have been consistently lacking in STEM when compared to the rest of the world. However, during that same time frame we have consistently kicked the economic living crap out of every other country. What do (did) we teach our kids that gave us this advantage.
I contend that it was:
1: Lawful disrespect for authority.
2: Meritocracy; It doesn’t matter what your political connections are, you can make it big if you work hard doing the right things.
3: Everyday there is a race, and Second Place is just “First Loser”
STEM alone, just gets you 30 years in a cube.
Yes it is important to understand how the world really works but if all you know how to do is crank numbers than you will be cranking for your whole life.
The problem with lighting a regulations bonfire is that if you go too far, you end up with the situation in 1950s London where 4000 people died in a couple of weeks because of pea-souper smog. Or the situation in LA in the 60s and 70s in which plants died and people got sick from city air turned to poison gas. Or Love Canal. Or…
Effective regulation can be achieved without onerous expense and red tape. It does require some imagination to do it, a quality not noticeably in evidence among bureaucrats.
A good example is the situation a few decades ago, in which the Danube was extremely heavily polluted. The solution that Czechoxlovakia (I think) found was brilliantly simple. Factories abstracting water from, and returning effluent to, the Danube had to place the outlet pipe upstream of the inlet. No regulation required other than that, which could be checked by one man with a pair of binoculars in a day.
A couple of years later, and pollution levels had substantially reduced. For reasons that don’t take much thought to unearth.
The problem with lighting a regulations bonfire
Who suggested a regulations bonfire?
That’s a strawman argument. First, the need to freeze any new regulations unless they address a legitimate emergency. Then, there needs to be a comprehensive review of existing regulations to eliminate those that are obsolete or redundant. Finally, those remaining regulations need examination on a cost-benefit analysis approach. Any regulations that are eliminated during this phase should be phased out over time to give everyone time to adjust to the changes.
What we have in the US today is bureaucracies writing and enacting thousands of new regulation every single year. The compliance costs are enormous and when combined with high business taxes and compliance with existing regulations (at the federal, state and local levels) make it very expensive to do business here.
Government agencies writing their own laws instead of congress is leading to lots of problems like we are seeing with the EPA and IRS who care more about who you voted for than clean air or paying your taxes. Which explains why Democrats don’t care.
Most bureaucrats are somewhat lazy, somewhat uninspired and
somewhat cowardly. That means they are just as happy to pass no regs
unless there is pressure to do so.
most regs are passed due to political pressure
I think Larry and Frank may be somewhat in agreement. I meant my comment in that the issue of lack of STEM talent isn’t about regulations. While Larry, I agree with your notion that regulations have done as much to deter manufacturing work; you made the comment to the DCclown’s non sequitor.
Reagan may have pushed initiatives to keep the US ahead of the USSR in terms of STEM talent. Beyond that his actions are not perpetuating the myth today. As a former NASA contractor, I found it tone death to hear how NASA needed to promote STEM education while it was laying off thousands of STEM trained employees. It was interesting to get the oft asked question “You work at NASA, what degree should my child get if they want to work there too?” They always seemed taken aback when I suggested PoliSci.
My point about excessive regulations is that they harm all forms of job creation (and continued existence) in America, not just STEM jobs. As an example, if a country isn’t making stuff, there won’t be as large a job market for engineers. No one rational is calling for eliminating all government regulations. I’m old enough to remember the air and water pollution in the 1960s and early 1970s and don’t want to go back to that. On the other hand, bureaucracies like the EPA may be created to address a particular set of problems but once those are solved, their primary mission becomes to continue and expand their existence. It’s similar to the charity “March of Dimes” which was created to address polio. Once that was solved, they changed their mission to birth defects. Sadly, no one is likely to cure those.
Jobs at NASA are always subject to government funding and politics. NASA’s long track record of dismal program and project management has also cost a lot of people their jobs as programs get cut when their budgets are taken over by out of control money suckers like the ISS or JWST or projects get canceled outright. How many good programs have been killed to prop up bad ones?
Likewise, contractors live and die by the contract. I was caught in the big military drawdown in 1992 and lost a long term (17 year) contracting job last year. Been there, done that. Although, in my case, losing that job last year turned out to be a blessing, I just didn’t know it at the time.
Been there, done that. Although, in my case, losing that job last year turned out to be a blessing, I just didn’t know it at the time.
Same here.
“The solution that Czechoxlovakia (I think) found was brilliantly simple. Factories abstracting water from, and returning effluent to, the Danube had to place the outlet pipe upstream of the inlet. No regulation required other than that, ”
got a link?
And if he doesn’t have a link?
If you refer to a story as proof to something, it helps to actually have some documentation. I’m sure Fletcher has some desire to verify what he does and says.
As a retired R&D Director for a Fortune 50 company, I can say that without foreign PhD’s, particularly in organic and other chemistry areas, there would be NO WAY to staff a US R&D organization, there simply aren’t enough American graduates with the appropriate backgrounds.
And this was a company KNOWN for paying top dollar for talent and with benefits second to none.
At the research PhD level, maybe. At the MS and BS working engineer level, there are plenty of middle-of-the-road people who are already citizens (either native born or naturalized), so I tend to agree with those who say that the H-1B program mostly serves to keep a lid on engineering wages. There are some fields where finding qualified talent is difficult (aerospace GNC engineers, anybody?), but H-1B isn’t much of a player because the vast majority of the jobs require a security clearance.
There is a related issue regarding environmental pollution. Simply put, just because you can detect a compound (or element) doesn’t mean that it is going to make any difference to anything, whether the difference you’re looking for is good or bad.
A few examples: There is gold in the soil in your backyard. I guarantee it. There are also detectable amounts of less desirable materials such as dioxin, mercury and various radioisotopes.
The point is that modern detection technology is extraordinarily sensitive. Some things can be detected at parts-per-trillion levels, and if they are something nasty that tends to make people who don’t understand science upset.
I think it was Paracelsus who said, “The poison is in the dose.”