Compensation and Benefits for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Workers: A Comparison of the Federal Government and thePrivate Sector

Abstract

U.S. government concerns about hiring and retaining scientists and engineers to contribute to national defense and the civilian economy has a long history, dating back to at least the World War II era. In 20051 the National Academies published a report, Rising Above the GatheringStorm, to underscore these concerns. Following this report, the U.S. Congress passed laws to improve the size and caliber of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce and investment in STEM education. This trend of U.S. government interest in STEM workforce matters continues. In its accompanying report to the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the U.S. SenateCommittee on Armed Services directed the Department of Defense (DoD), in consultation with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Department of Energy, to conduct a comparison of salary and benefits for government professional engineers and scientists to similar positions in the private sector. The report lays out the motivation for its mandate: The committee believes the Department of Defense must develop new and innovative methods to attract and manage talent with highly valuable technical skills (U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, 2018, p. 283). To address the 2019 NDAA congressional requirement, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Civilian Personnel Policy asked the RAND Corporations National Defense Research Institute (NDRI) to undertake the analysis outlined in the congressional report language and to assist in developing the required report. The NDRIs approach to the DoD request is to interpret engineers and scientists as the STEM workforce in the federal government, as compared with the STEM workforce in the U.S. private sector. The basic question our analysis addresses is whether STEM workers in the federal government are competitively compensated compared with STEM workers in the private sector.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2021
Accession Number
AD1121104

Entities

People

  • Brian Phillips
  • Hannah Acheson-field
  • Isabel Leamon
  • Kathryn A. Edwards
  • Maria Mccollester
  • Maria. C. Lytell
  • Noah Johnson

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Administrative Personnel
  • Biological Sciences
  • Business Administration
  • Employment
  • Ethnic Groups
  • Families (Human)
  • Geographic Regions
  • Geography
  • Health Services
  • Information Systems
  • Management Personnel
  • Minority Groups
  • National Governments
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • Personnel Management
  • Public Administration

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Defense Technology Research and Development.
  • STEM Education