Where science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates move: Human capital, employment patterns, and interstate migration in the United States

Abstract

This research investigates the interstate migration of workers in the United States who have earned an undergraduate STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) degree compared with those who have not. We build on previous studies that (a) classified “skilled” workers as having earned an undergraduate degree (b) used net migration gain or loss as a yardstick of relative destination attraction, and (c) advanced the idea that physical amenities play an outsized role in labour market preferences for skilled workers. We calibrate the attractivity of states for three levels of human capital and then evaluate these assessments of relative attractivity to show that workers with different types of human capital respond to different labour market signals in contradictory ways. Amenity, measured by heating degree days, has little to do with the state‐to‐state migration of workers who have a STEM degree, yet helps explain the migration patterns of workers with no undergraduate degree. Employment growth in a state influences migration for degreed workers in the recessionary years but not in the period of recovery. The opposite holds for workers without a degree. States with high percentages of any type of degreed workers attract both STEM and non‐STEM degreed migrants but not those without a degree. States with a large share of STEM degreed workers in their degreed workforce are especially attractive for STEM degreed migrants. The conclusions discuss what the findings imply about diverging access to labour market opportunity by human capital and state higher education policy.

The Interregional Migration of Human Capital: The Case of “First-Class” University Graduates in China

“…Individuals with high human capital have been widely acknowledged as key drivers of regional economic development (Faggian et al, 2017). In the past decade, researchers have become increasingly interested in the interregional migration of highly skilled migrants, but studies have mainly focused on developed countries (Haussen & Uebelmesser, 2018;Imeraj et al, 2018;Wright & Ellis, 2019). This empirical study enriches previous research by illustrating the migration pattern of recent university graduates in China, particularly in the context of the implementation of the "double first-class" initiative as the national strategy and cities' "war of attracting talent".…”

“…Meanwhile, they exhibit high rates of spatial mobility (Landolt & Thieme, 2018;Liu et al, 2017;Venhorst et al, 2010). The literature on the migration of university graduates in China is still limited compared with corresponding literature in European countries and the US (Faggian & McCann, 2009a, 2009bHaussen & Uebelmesser, 2018;Wright & Ellis, 2019). Particularly, given the heated "war of attracting talent" which began from 2017, it is unknown whether the migration pattern of those targeted talent has been reshaped.…”

“…Human capital can be measured in various ways, i.e. skills, experience, and occupation, but the most common measurement is the level of education (Wright & Ellis, 2019). People with a bachelor's degree and above are usually thought to possess a high level of human capital, and therefore, university graduates are the main target of the "war of attracting talent" in Chinese cities.…”

The changing geography of social mobility in the United States

“…In the NP & M region, the combination of favorable early-life conditions with outmigration from the region has provided a pathway to higher income jobs. The relatively high upward mobility and outmigration rates of the NP & M region are particularly remarkable when considered in light of the long-term decline in interregional migration rates across the United States (28,43,44). This raises a crucial question for continued research: Why is outmigration not uniformly high across various low-income places and the children who grow up there?…”

Intellectual Security as the Leading Factor of Economic Development

“…It might be that immigration not only creates investment opportunities, but that migrants can influence the host countries in many ways, such as the settlement of remote areas, increasing return on investment and wages across the economy. In contrast, when analyzing the impact of migration to U.S. states, it is clear that state-level migration in the long run entails higher output per worker from increased investment and specialization effects (Wright and Ellis 2019). The locals usually take on different tasks, leading to efficiency gains through specialization.…”