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Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics
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Employment and wages for additional definitions of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
To give users and producers of STEM data flexibility to choose their definitions, the SOC Policy Committee identified different ways to define STEM, and grouped SOC occupations into four subdomains and five occupation types. The SOCPC guidance groups STEM occupations into four subdomains based on the STEM subject area associated with each occupation: life and physical science, engineering, mathematics, and information technology; social science; architecture; and health. The guidance also groups STEM occupations into five occupation types, based on the job duties and type of work performed: research, development, design, or practitioner occupations; technologist and technician occupations; postsecondary teaching occupations; managerial occupations; and sales occupations. Combining the four subdomains with the five occupation types produces a grid or matrix structure.
The OEWS has traditionally used one of the definitions in defining STEM, but others are available. To show users employment and wage data in the alternate definitions, OEWS data is used to summarize data in groups. The list of occupations in each group is available. For these tabulations, OEWS placed occupations that cross groups into only one group [1].
[1] Some occupations don’t fit neatly into a single subdomain or occupation type, so the SOCPC recommendations assign them to two subdomains or occupation types. For example, the SOC occupation 11-9041 Architectural and Engineering Managers is split between two subdomains: the life and physical science, engineering, mathematics, and information technology subdomain (engineering managers) and the architecture subdomain (architectural managers). Similarly, 15-1299 Computer Occupations, All Other may contain both computer research, development, design, or practitioner jobs and technologist and technician jobs that do not fit into a more specific SOC category, so this occupation is assigned to both occupation types. In practice, it isn’t possible to split the OEWS survey data for a single SOC category between two subdomains or occupation types. For example, within SOC code 11-9041 Architectural and Engineering Managers, it isn’t possible to determine which jobs represent architectural managers and which represent engineering managers in order to assign each to the appropriate subdomain. Therefore, in order to prevent double counting, split occupations were assigned to only one subdomain or occupation type in the data tabulation used for this article. Assigning split occupations to a single cell will tend to overestimate employment for some subdomains and occupation types and underestimate employment for others, and may also affect the wage estimates for some cells. The effects may be particularly large for smaller subdomains or occupation types containing split occupations. These caveats should be kept in mind when interpreting the data in this article.
Last Modified Date: December 21, 2023