https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764218768847 American Behavioral Scientist 1–6 © 2018 SAGE Publications Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0002764218768847 journals.sagepub.com/home/abs Article U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Underrepresentation of Women and Minorities Roli Varma 1 Abstract Increasingly, industrial leaders, governmental officials, and academic scholars have become concerned whether the United States can successfully compete in science and engineering (S&E) fields. This is when employment in S&E jobs has grown faster than employment in all occupations in the United States. It is proposed that the United States has not been able to build its S&E human capital necessary for technological innovations and economic growth. Women and minorities are seen as essential to fill the perceived gap. There is a higher representation of women in S&E education and occupations. Yet overall demographics of S&E fields have remained unchanged. The U.S. technology industry has been progressively employing workers from foreign countries to meet their S&E internal workforce needs. Many have been outsourcing the work to developing countries, namely China and India. This article shows that technology companies that embrace the United States’s changing demographics would gain the economic benefits from a diverse S&E workforce. Keywords diversity, immigration, outsourcing In the era of globalization, industrial leaders, government officials, and academic scholars have become concerned whether the United States will be able to sustain its international competitiveness in the long run. The Harvard Business School noted that the United States is, in fact, failing the test of economic competitiveness (Porter, Rivkin, Desai, & Raman, 2016). One of the major concerns is due to the United States’ 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA Corresponding Author: Roli Varma, School of Public Administration, University of New Mexico, MSC053100, Albuquerque, NM 87131-1466, USA. Email: varma@unm.edu 768847ABS XX X 10.1177/0002764218768847American Behavioral ScientistVarma research-article 2018