Back
A diverse workforce provides the potential for innovation by leveraging different backgrounds, experiences, and points of view. Innovation and creativity, along with technical skills relying on expertise in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), contribute to a robust STEM enterprise. STEM workers also have higher median earnings and lower rates of unemployment compared with non-STEM workers.
This report provides high-level insights from multiple data sources into the diversity of the STEM workforce in the United States.
Among the report’s key findings:
- The U.S. STEM workforce gradually diversified between 2011 and 2021, with increased representation of women and underrepresented minorities—Hispanics or Latinos, Blacks or African Americans, and American Indians or Alaska Natives.
- In 2021, among people ages 18 to 74 years, women made up half (51%) of the total U.S. population and about a third (35%) of people employed in STEM occupations.
- In 2021, nearly a quarter (24%) of individuals in the U.S. workforce were employed in STEM occupations.
- Hispanic workers represented 15% of the total STEM workforce in 2021, and Asian and Black workers were 10% and 9%, respectively. American Indians and Alaska Natives together made up less than 1% of the U.S. population and STEM workforce in 2021.
- In 2021, among female STEM workers, 68% had science and engineering related jobs (health care workers, S&E managers, S&E precollege teachers, and technologists and technicians); women represented nearly two-thirds (65%) of workers in S&E-related occupations.