Building a Better NASA Workforce Meeting the Workforce Needs for the National Vision for Space Exploration (2007) / Chapter Skim
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2 Overall Assessment of Workforce Supply and Demand
2 Overall Assessment of Workforce Supply and Demand
Pages 15-23
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From page 15... ...
Although the potential for a mass exodus may be exaggerated, there is clear evidence that NASA's employee age distribution has changed as a result of policies enacted during the 1990s. NASA officials reported to the committee that the current age distribution of the agency's civil service workforce peaks in the age range from 40 to 44 (Figure 2.1)
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From page 16... ...
S Workforce Federal Government 20 Percentage of Workforce 15 10 5 0 Under 20 to 25 to 30 to 35 to 40 to 45 to 50 to 55 to 60 to 65 to 70 or 20 24 29 34 39 44 49 54 59 64 69 older Five-Year Age Bands FIGURE 2.1 The age distribution of NASA's current workforce compared to the age distributions for the aerospace sector, the federal government, and the total U.S.
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From page 17... ...
The committee believes that sudden mass retirement is an unlikely future scenario. Offsetting the prospects for a retirement wave in the near future is the fact that 2.2 NASA is now experiencing an overall annual attrition rate of only 3.5 percent and a slightly lower rate for scientists and engineers.3 These rates are substantially lower than retirement rates for the federal government, which are around 7 percent.
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From page 18... ...
Aerospace engineers in the DOD accounted for 43 percent of the federal total aerospace engineers in 2002. In the early 2000s Booz Allen Hamilton conducted two studies for the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the National Reconnaissance Office -- the Space Industrial Base Study (SIBS)
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From page 19... ...
Nevertheless, AIA projections anticipate a modest level of growth in aerospace industry sales through 2011, probably in the range of 4 to 5 percent per year. The projected growth in business, combined with the potential for retirements from an aging aerospace workforce, suggest growing demand in the aerospace labor market.
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From page 20... ...
Furthermore, in the BLS classification of occupations, all aerospace engineers are grouped together, and important specialties such as systems engineering are not identified at all. NASA's job definitions do not correspond with the standard occupational classifications produced by BLS, which lack sufficient detail to be useful for NASA planning.
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From page 21... ...
science and engineering students often cited in the press is not a true decline, but rather a relative decline reflecting primarily the massive growth of the student communities in developing nations such as China and India. The committee believes that this relative decline does not pose serious consequences for NASA's ability to attract and retain highly skilled personnel.
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From page 22... ...
Current demographic trends indicate that white males will constitute a smaller share of the labor market over time, primarily because of immigration. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that white males will constitute 34.9 percent of the total U.S.
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From page 23... ...
. 18The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not forecast a shortage of aerospace engineers: its forecasts are for a supply that meets the market's requirements for workers.
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