The STEM Brain Drain: Are We Losing America's Technical Workforce?

🔬STEM vs Non-STEM Overview

Of the roughly 2.07M federal employees in our dataset, 26.6% work in STEM occupations. These workers — engineers, scientists, IT specialists, mathematicians, and healthcare professionals — are the backbone of agencies from NASA to the VA.

Federal STEM professionals earn significantly more than their non-STEM counterparts — but the gap with private-sector tech salaries keeps widening, making retention a growing crisis.

📊STEM Disciplines Breakdown

Health occupations dominate the federal STEM workforce, driven largely by the VA hospital system. Engineering and science follow, concentrated in defense and research agencies.

🏛️Top Agencies by STEM Workforce

The Department of Veterans Affairs leads with the largest STEM workforce, mostly healthcare professionals. Defense agencies (Army, Navy, Air Force) follow with massive engineering and technology workforces. NASA, despite its reputation, ranks lower by raw headcount.

⚠️The Brain Drain Problem

The federal government faces a compounding talent crisis. Private sector companies like Google, Amazon, and defense contractors offer salaries 2–3x federal pay for equivalent STEM roles. A GS-13 software engineer in D.C. earns roughly $120K; the same engineer at a major tech firm earns $250K+.

Every STEM professional who leaves federal service takes institutional knowledge, security clearances, and mission-critical expertise with them. The replacement pipeline is thinning.

The national security implications are severe. Federal agencies manage nuclear weapons, cybersecurity infrastructure, disease surveillance, air traffic control, and space exploration. These missions require deep technical expertise that takes years to develop. When experienced engineers and scientists leave for the private sector, their replacements — if agencies can hire them at all — start from scratch.

• Pay compression: Federal STEM salaries lag private sector by 30–50% for mid-career professionals.
• Hiring speed: Federal hiring takes 3–6 months on average; tech companies extend offers in weeks.
• Aging workforce: Federal STEM employees skew older, and many are nearing retirement with no succession pipeline.
• RIF vulnerability: Workforce reductions disproportionately hit newer STEM hires, accelerating the brain drain among early-career talent.

The irony is stark: at the same moment the government needs more technical capacity — for AI governance, cybersecurity, and emerging threats — it's losing the people who provide it. Across-the-board cuts don't distinguish between a redundant administrative position and a cybersecurity analyst protecting critical infrastructure.

The question isn't whether the federal government can afford to pay competitive STEM salaries. It's whether it can afford not to.

Explore the full workforce data on the agencies dashboard, see how cuts are reshaping each agency on the DOGE impact page, or dive into salary patterns across the federal workforce.