Defense and military have propelled scientific and engineering creativity and ingenuity since their inception, really. Driven by defense spending under President Ronald Reagan, aerospace peaked in 1990. Though nothing like the 1980s boom, aerospace and defense jobs have seen a comeback in recent years.

Today engineers and scientists comprise 10 percent of the 600,000 employees working for the Pentagon, according to National Defense magazine. Of that workforce, 12 percent is eligible to retire this year. But by 2010, Defense Department officials expect that number to jump from 7,200 individuals to 13,000.

With such a large number poised to retire during the next few years, not to mention a diminishing pool of forthcoming talent to fill the ranks, is the nation's technological prowess in jeopardy?

A mass exodus of these workers doesn't seem entirely likely. More likely, it will be gradual. For one, people are working past "typical" retirement age, and the retirement-aged workers seem to be planning to work longer than "typical" workers. Add to that the fact that employees in the Defense Department workforce typically stay about four years beyond their first date of retirement eligibility, "which would buy the department extra time to hire replacements," National Defense magazine surmises. Moreover, the defense publication's senior editor, Grace Jean, notes:

During the past three years, 2,700 engineers have retired. The Pentagon, trying to fill those vacancies, has hired 2,500 new workers during that timeframe.

Rather, in the long-term, the Defense Department is more concerned about the declining interest in science and technology found among current students in the United States.

Case in point: Earlier this month, a year's supply of H-1B visas disappeared on the first day that applications were accepted. On Day 1, the number of petitions from U.S. companies applying for visas for highly skilled immigrants exceeded the government cap by nearly 100,000, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced. USCIS says it received 150,000 applications for 65,000 H-1B visa slots on the day the process officially began. Last year, the supply lasted two months.

The America Competes Act, unveiled last month, calls for hiking U.S. investment in basic research and to improve math and science educations. The Innovation Agenda endorsed by the House Democrats, as IMT readers may recall, calls for producing 100,000 new scientists, engineers and mathematicians over four years.

These are fine ideas, no doubt, at a time when China, India and other nations are investing massively to increase their competitiveness in technology. But even if these initiatives work and increase the number of future engineers in the workforce, the Pentagon also finds itself in competition against private companies for workers.

As such, to generate interest in working for the government, the Office of Personnel Management has begun a "career patterns" initiative to assess departments' work cultures. Perks such as job sharing, flexible hours and telecommuting appeal to a new generation of workers to whom work-life balance is a crucial preference.

As IMT noted in the fall, U.S. workers increasingly are "giving up on traditional employment in favor of alternative arrangements, with 20 million workers telecommuting and 10.3 million working as independent contractors," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said last May in a report entitled Work, Entrepreneurship, and Opportunity in 21st Century America. According to the Bureau of National Affairs, citing government estimates from the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, those 10.3 million independent contractors make up 7.4 percent of the U.S. workforce.

Moreover, highly bureaucratic environments typically have dissuaded younger generations from pursuing civil service careers. "We are actively pursuing that, not only for engineering, but also for other mission-critical occupations," Patricia S. Bradshaw, deputy undersecretary of defense for civilian personnel policy, tells National Defense.

For instance, experts say the decline in the acquisition workforce has been a major root of federal procurement problems. The number of contracting officers is half the number it was in 2001, while the number of contracts has doubled, reports Federal Computer Week. As such, several senior U.S. lawmakers have said the acquisition workforce desperately needs attention, possibly bringing the situation some long-awaited help.

In the private sector, companies have begun luring recent engineering graduates. Raytheon, for instance, hires hundreds of engineers annually, the majority right out of college — part of the generation known as "Millennials." There, several younger engineers work in an advanced concepts lab, where they are given more autonomy to develop their ideas.

This year, the Pentagon launched a student training and recruitment program, hiring college students to market the Defense Department to engineering students.

As older employees (gradually) retire, companies need to be aggressive about finding new skilled workers. There may be a shortage of talent in the labor pool until the kids of the "Baby Boomers" gain the experience they can only gain over time. Positions in the U.S. government are no exception; especially if current military conflicts throughout the world continue to take place and require the scientific and technological edge only scientists and engineers can maintain.

Resources

Keeping Pace with Retiring Engineers
by Grace Jean
National Defense, April 2007

H-1B visas hit 65,000 ceiling for FY08
The Economic Times, April 5, 2007

Summary of the America Competes Act
March 2007

The House Democrats' Innovation Agenda

Congress to act on workforce shortage
by Matthew Weigelt
FCW.com, April 16, 2007