Forecasting the Labour Markets for Research Scientsits and Engineers in the European Union

The aim of this study is to assess whether the higher education systems in the Member States of the European Union will produce sufficient numbers of science & technology (S&T) graduates to meet the demands for research scientists and engineers (RSE’s) up to 2002. On the demand side, we distinguish between job openings due to employment growth (expansion demand) and due to outflow (replacement demand). Employment of RSE’s is modelled as an error correction mechanism with R&D expenditure as the explanatory variable. A recent survey of European R&D establishments enables us to determine replacement demand. On the supply side, the labour market inflow of RSE’s is derived from data on S&T-graduates and RSE employment. We produce forecasts for demand and supply for 14 Member States of the EU under four alternative scenarios, which are based on two dimensions: economic growth and human capital policy. The forecasts are first used to identify labour market discrepancies by country and by field of study. Then we identify the opportunities for international labour mobility to solve the bottlenecks in the labour markets. The forecasting results indicate considerable shortages of RSE’s in certain fields of study in various Member States of the EU under certain scenarios. At the same time, for the EU as a whole there are excess supplies in each of the four fields of study distinguished, no matter which scenario will unfold up to 2002, illustrating the importance of international labour mobility.