Pathways to Progress: Readying the Workforce

Lawmakers and industry leaders gathered in Washington, D.C. to discuss trends in STEM workforce development as more companies and the government look to implement new technologies.

The details: On December 12, Axios economics reporter Courtenay Brown and senior policy reporter Caitlin Owens hosted one-on-one conversations with Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) chief officer for scientific workforce diversity Dr. Marie A. Bernard.

Why it matters: As technology rapidly advances, the U.S. is expanding investments into emerging fields like AI and semiconductors, leaving a need to upskill and transform the workforce.

Rep. Cárdenas discussed the worker shortage in STEM fields and how he believes communities from all backgrounds should be encouraged to enter the industry.

• "People come from all over the world, not only to be educated here, but they actually stay here and want to work here. So the workforce is here, but we have to nurture that workforce. We have to work with those communities, we have to encourage those communities to get them to understand that they belong there. And that's what's been missing for far too long in this country. It is no secret that when it comes to the technical world of STEM jobs, it doesn't look like America. It looks like one side of town, it doesn't look like every town."

Dr. Bernard highlighted the importance of having a diverse workforce of researchers.

• "...We have really good evidence to demonstrate that if you have a lot of different perspectives approaching research, approaching health care, etc., you get much greater creativity, much greater innovation, much better outcomes. The experiences of me as a black female who grew up in Oklahoma is going to be very different from those of someone else in the way that I approach a problem... And that translates into good science."

Sponsored segment:

Shipt CEO Kamau Witherspoon highlighted the gap of diversity in the STEM field.

• "…There's a pretty substantial gap. Latin Americans represent only about 9% of the STEM workforce. You look at Hispanic-Americans there's only about 8%, women broadly are underrepresented in STEM jobs…So for us at Shipt, it's important for us to actually tackle that."
• "We're in about over 5000 different communities today…If I don't have a team reflective of the various communities we serve, we are going to be less likely to be able to meet the needs of our customers."

Thank you to Shipt for sponsoring this event.