Scientific-technical workers: education supplies, occupational demands

Recent studies by the National Science Foundation document the shortage of qualified scientific and engineering workers in the US. Because the demand for such workers is relatively insensitive to salaries, there is an emerging scholarly consensus that, rather than further subsidizing demand (and salaries), the US needs to subsidize supply. This paper argues that with regard to the Associate and Bachelors' level degrees, this consensus may be mistaken. A new data set compiled for this study relates educational supply to occupational demand for related job "clusters" within 47 US states and Washington, DC. The supply of scientific and engineering workers is far more salary sensitive, at least at the lower degree levels, than demand. Increased market demand, if it can be more closely targeted to these degree levels, is likely to meet with an encouraging supply response.