By Industry Week
For the past 10 years, the U.S. has put a strong focus on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, but there is still a serious shortage of workers. In the fourth annual STEM survey by Emerson released on August 21, 2 out of 5 Americans believe the STEM worker shortage is at crisis levels.
While the survey found students today are twice as likely to study STEM fields compared to their parents, the number of roles requiring STEM expertise is growing at a rate that exceeds current workforce capacity.
In manufacturing alone, the National Association of Manufacturing and Deloitte predict the U.S. will need to fill about 3.5 million jobs by 2025; yet as many as 2 million of those jobs may go unfilled, due to difficulty finding people with the skills in demand.