AGI Announces Publication of 2016 Status of the Geoscience Workforce Report

ALEXANDRIA, VA - The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) announces the publication of its 2016 Status of the Geoscience Workforce Report. This biennial comprehensive report provides an overview of educational, employment, and economic indicators in the geosciences.

Some notable highlights from this year’s 142-page report include:

• Even though experienced employment in the energy sector has been soft since 2014, both new graduates entering the energy sector and all geoscientists engaging in the environmental and engineering consulting industries have been seeing growth and robust activity. There are now nearly 325,000 geoscientists working in the United States.
• Since 2014, a combination of continued record geoscience university enrollment, increased efficiency in industry, and some softening of expected demand in the energy industry, the projected 2022 shortfall in geoscientists in the United States has shrunk from 135,000 to 90,000 full-time equivalents.
• The report highlights the full salary ranges for geoscience graduates at the bachelor’s-, master’s-, and doctoral-levels. Every new graduate making more than $90,000 annually was employed by the oil and gas sector. There was also a documented increase in median salaries in major geoscience industries, continuing the trend of the geosciences as one of the most well-compensated STEM fields.
• Though federal funding of geoscience research has now dropped to only 6% of the total federal research budget, that still represents $1.1 Billion in 2013, the highest level since the 2009 stimulus package.

The 2016 Report (ISBN-13: 978-0-913312-54-4) is available for sale either digitally as a PDF for $10.00 or in print for $30.00. For more information and ordering information, please visit http://bit.ly/GeoWorkforce.