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The Impact of Defense Spending on Nondefense Engineering Labor Markets A Report to the National Academy of Engineering (1989) / Chapter Skim
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Anticipating the Future
Pages 13-17

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From page 13...
... Lee Hansen identified a number of survey and analytic approaches for estimating the future need for scientific and technical personnel. He also identified an ad hoc method for est~madng demand associated with a specific government program.
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From page 14...
... , , Ad hoc Methods Hansen also reviewed an ad hoc approach developed recently to predict demand for scientific and technical personnel in a component of the defense program -- the Innovative Science and Technology Office, a small part of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (Sterling Hobe Co~porabon, 19861. To estimate personnel requirements for this pioneering R&D program, the analysts calculated the ratios of personnel to dollars spent by organizations engaged in each of the types of research involved in the program.
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From page 15...
... A study undertaken for the National Science Foundation in the early 198Os, however, found that the market would accommodate a real increase in defense expenditures from 1982 to 1987 Hat ranged from 3 to 8 percent per year, but that this could result in serious stress in the markets for computer specialists and aeronautical and electrical engineers.4 However, the Pane! could not forecast with a tolerable degree of certainty the labor market implications of any further growth in defense expenditures.
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From page 16...
... Varying the extent to which these mechanisms are used can help damp the swings in production of undergraduate engineering degrees and influence the decision of degree recipients to continue their engineering education at the graduate level. In addition to mechanisms designed to influence degree production, measures aimed at more effective use of scarce engineering resources can also be considered.
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From page 17...
... These programs are much smaller now and, with undergraduate engineering enrollments beginning to decline and the shortage of engineering faculty continuing, expansion of these programs to accommodate further growth in defense or nondefense activity may -not be as feasible as it once was. The market has been able to accommodate past changes in engineering demand and supply through the wide range of adjustment mechanisms that exist within its institutional structure.
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Key Terms

  • engineering labor
  • defense expenditures
  • market conditions
  • engineering work
  • labor markets

  • technical personnel
  • personnel requirements
  • engineering demand
  • mechanism operates
  • adjustment mechanisms

  • degree production
  • computer specialists
  • various channels
  • undergraduate engineering
  • future changes

  • hoc approach
  • labor supply
  • market implications
  • systematically relates
  • neither evaluates

  • engineering faculty
  • serious stress
  • student choices
  • accommodate past
  • lee hansen

  • various indicators
  • using past
  • technical work
  • temporary conditions
  • hat ranged


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