D.C. as science mecca

In science journalism circles, the nation’s capital is the place to be. Not only is it a center of research policy, but many scientific societies also call this place home. Still, I was a bit surprised to find out that fully one in 10 of our area residents work in research-related fields.

Not a LOT surprised. I’m well aware of four national labs and the Defense Department in our area.  But a National Science Foundation report, issued yesterday, now identifies the D.C. metro area as the nation’s most science-rich. From Northern Virginia up through suburban Maryland (a region with the District of Columbia at its center), there are more than 300,000 science and tech workers. That’s 50 percent more than in the next biggest hive of research: the New York City metro area.

That New York region’s share translates to just four percent of its workforce. Only Silicon Valley beat D.C. on a proportional basis — with 15 percent of that technotropolis’ workforce employed in science and tech jobs. In terms of actual workers, however, even Silicon Valley only has 46 percent as many people employed in science and engineering fields as does our D.C. region.

With a population of some 4.8 million people, the D.C. metro area is only about half of the size of even the third and fourth biggest employers of science and tech workers: the greater- Los Angeles and metro-Chicago regions. Each of these. like New York, employs only about 4 percent of its workforce in research-related fields, which puts them all just under the national average.

The new numbers reflect the situation for the nation’s 5.8 million scientists and engineers in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available. Overall, it appears, their fields have generally beat the national average in terms of both job and income growth. But, of course, these numbers are all pre-recession.

Compared to 2004 figures, the employment rate for these fields was up 13.7 percent (an annual increase averaging 3.3 percent) — or about 2.5 times the rate of increase for the U.S. workforce generally. At roughly 3.5 percent, salaries in science and tech fields climbed about 0.5 percentage points more, annually, over the four years ending in May 2008 than they did for the nation as a whole, NSF reports.

So who earned most? Engineers averaged $84,000 in 2008, physical scientists almost $77,000, and mathematicians, computer scientists and life scientists all roughly $75,000. These groups also averaged annual increases in pay of 3.4 to 3.8 percent — with most of these fields at the higher end of this range.

The real question is how research-related fields weathered the recession. And answers to that won’t be in for a while.