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ABSTRACT
Concerns over the supply of highly-skilled (HS) science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) workers are well established and have been a feature of policy discourse in the UK for more than 50 years. Since the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union, these concerns have been exacerbated by uncertainty about the movement of labour between UK and Europe. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of STEM skills in a wide range of areas. However, despite continued government investment in initiatives to address these concerns, the evidence base for shortages is neither well-established nor compatible with economic theories of labour supply. In order to fill a gap in the current evidence, we report on a unique analysis following the career destinations of STEM graduates from the 1970 British Cohort Study. While only a minority of STEM graduates ever work in highly-skilled STEM jobs, we identified three particular characteristics of the STEM labour market that may present challenges for employers: STEM employment appears to be predicated on early entry to the sector; a large proportion of STEM graduates are likely to never work in the sector; and there may be more movement out of HS STEM positions by older workers than in other sectors.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Later studies, such as the Millennium Cohortß Study, used random sampling. However, at the time of writing, the participants are not yet old enough to have graduated with undergraduate degrees.
2. A graduate is defined as a person who is aged between 21 and 64, not enrolled on any educational course and who has a level of higher education above A level standard.
3. The functional manager occupational sub-group includes managerial roles in finance, marketing, sales, personnel, ICT and research and development.
4. Non-response in BCS70 has been shown to be non-random, with ‘men from lower social backgrounds and with less educated parents’ being underrepresented. However, there is little to suggest variation between sweeps in this bias (Mostafa and Wiggins Citation2015, 144. See also: Plewis et al. Citation2004).
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Emma Smith
Emma Smith is Professor of Education at the University of Warwick. She researches education and social justice and education policy. As a former chemistry teacher she is particularly interested in science education. She also writes about the use of secondary data in education research.
Patrick White
Patrick White is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Leicester. He has researched education and career choice, the teaching labour market and lifelong learning. He also writes about teaching research methods and has published extensively on the topic of research questions.