Shortage of Science Graduates Will Thwart Manufacturing-based Recovery

Translation: More science graduates are needed so we'll have a surplus and we can lay off experienced workers and not have to pay them higher salaries.

That's two birds on a stone: publishing this, virtually every month, we will also be picking on girls, just to make them feel bad for their career preferences.

Translation close, but what you meant was:

"Industry pushes claim of insurmountable science graduate shortfall so they can import more low-wage overseas grads who once trained will happily return to their countries in order to support the transfer of the manufacturing jobs that would have been created here if only we had more science graduates."

If they are just looking for graduates most Diploma Mills Universities will pump out all that's needed and more.

Now if they are looking for skilled properly educated and trained individuals that might be a bit harder order to fill.

So which do they want? People with pieces of paper or people with knowledge and skills?

If "STEM" career workers were paid what finance and management get paid there would not be a shortage. The reality is we work harder for less, not a good rallying cry to entice young people into a profession.

I don't know how you get a generation of corporate managers to start valuing scientists and engineers in the home offices at least to the same level as themselves, but that is what needs to happen.

What is good pay for an engineer, mathemetician,statistician, or generic scientist with a few years practical work experience in an average specialty? Let's say with a M.S.

AROOGAH AROOGAH... SARCASM ALERT
You don't mean they've realized that accountants bankers and lawyers don't actually create anything? (other than chaos and fat pay packets for themselves)
Surely all the media studies, sociology and sports psychology graduates will step in and save us all?
Del

Lots of what I read is there is a major shortage of skilled people in all areas of industrial maintenance and engineering in the US. It is at a critical time and will only worsen in the next few years. We are talking about skilled workers. The old timers that are retiring have more skills than could ever be learned in a school setting. I am one of them that learned from the wizard of all, he started me out when I was 18, I always wanted to know what made things work since I was 3, at 5 I was working on speed boats with my neighbor, at 8 I was working on race cars and swapping out motors, trannys and rear ends in all kinds of cars back in the 60's 70's 80's. Al gave me the ability to really test my skills in machining and designing new equipment by listening to what they (the customer, Boss) wanted, develop it, design it, build a prototype and then make it commercially available. It was a great experience that I still think about today. That was 40 years ago. Today I design and build Marine electric propulsion systems from 36VDC - 144VDC up to 100HP and looking to 200HP next year and 288VDC with and w/o generation. We have a major shortage of skilled workers. They do not have to be schooled in that setting there are many folks that learn more from an old timer than can ever be learned in school!

All I know is if they don;t fill these spaces. Today's companies will be crashing all over themselves when there is no one to fix the machine.

As for our Government, they could not drive them self out of a mud puddle if the road was dry in the US, no idea what's up in the UK aside from Northern Ireland that seems to be enjoying a great economic uptick.

Manufacturing. What a loaded word THAT has become.

How many here remember when "building" a hamburger was proposed as a manufacturing job? I've never really looked into detailed manufacturing statistics, but my brain gets triggered to "seek" for no good reason, sometimes. So I decided to see what info. is available for manufacturing data since the article doesn't provide any such immediate links. I tend to want some source(s) -- data, graphs, etc. to look at when numbers are being thrown around in articles.

If you want to pass out immediately here is a sample overview, from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, with a bunch of links to more detailed information. I couldn't find anything later than 2007 statistics. Surely somebody, somewhere, has broken all this down in to something more easily decipherable. (And I feel sure many here could cut me to the chase. Please do. This is just my real-time adventure.)

Then there is our (sorry for being provincial) neighbor to the north. Their governmental manufacturing statistics are here. Seemingly simpler and faster to load.

Next I stumbled across this search engine for market research, etc. It might be helpful, I say to myself. This one offers data that has been analyzed. It may be available from the BLS web site, but that can be like a needle in a haystack. I used the search terms "worldwide manufacturing" and was offered a substitute, "Did you mean manufacturing in the world?" Quickly, admitting my mistake, I clicked on the revised terms and didn't look at what my original terms had netted. Gee, there sure are a lot of reports to look through.

So I go back to my main search engine results and find something a bit closer to what I'm looking for... a summary paper (takes a while to load); but not quite, this is only for Quarter 1 of 2012. The next link I click on is closer -- but it's 5 years old. (And interestingly, it's back to the BLS info. At least it's been dug out. Someone there realizes the haystack nature of it all, and is trying to be helpful.) It has a graph that ends up being too general, but maybe nearer what I was looking for.

If you are interested in becoming a manufacturer, you might want to read this book Preface (and book, I suppose) first. But be forewarned... by the time you have enough data to work with, your company might already have gone belly up.

We really can easily drown in a sea of data. And many times it's not because of too much pertinent data, it's just TOO MUCH data. That's what I get for asking. I think I've forgotten what I was originally after. Something about manufacturing.