Thanks to Richard Jones at the American Institute of Physics for pointing out this report put together by RAND on The U.S. Scientific and Technical Workforce: Improving Data for Decisionmaking. The report is an interesting collection of papers on the current controversy surrounding the adequacy of the science and engineering workforce and very relevant to current questions about projected shortages in the IT workforce specifically.
I’ll have more to comment on this as I dig in to the report, but I can say by way of preview that the most notable paper appears to be Michael S. Teitlebaum’s chapter “Do We Need More Scientists?” Teitelbaum, a demographer and program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, argues that recent history is littered with predictions of S&E workforce shortages that have failed to appear and that any current claim of shortage has to address how it’s possible given the relatively high levels of unemployment found in certain S&E occupations and the lack of increasing salaries.
More on this soon, but in the meantime, check out the report.