Hard Times for Scientists

Throughout the post-Sputnik era, there was unprecedented demand--and unaccustomed prosperity--for U.S. scientists, engineers and technicians. No longer. As a result of sharp cutbacks in defense spending, reduced allocations for space programs, federal tightfistedness when it comes to basic research, and a faltering national economy, the scientific community is suffering a fullblown recession of its own.

Hardest hit are engineers, scientists and technicians employed in defense and other Government-supported industries. According to the latest figures from the U.S. Labor Department, total joblessness in these areas may run as high as 65,000. Of these, about half are laid-off workers in the beleaguered aerospace field where unemployment ranges from 10% to 15% of the labor force. Other estimates put total scientific and technical unemployment in the U.S. as high as 100,000.

The technological recession is not limited to the aerospace centers of southern California and the state of Washington. Along Massachusetts' famed Route 128, hub of the nation's electronics industry, up to 20% of the professional labor force is estimated to be out of work. At Florida's Cape Kennedy, the number of jobs has dropped by 40%. The cutbacks have even touched the onetime elite of American science. Of the nation's 20,000 physicists with Ph.D.s, at least 3,000 were looking for work at year's end; about half of the job seekers were members of last year's graduating class. A substantial number finally accepted jobs outside the country--and, in about 1,000 cases, outside physics.

The Federal Government is already making an effort to help out-of-work specialists. The National Science Foundation is sending 15 unemployed scientists and engineers in the San Francisco Bay Area back to school to learn computer technology, a field where there is still a manpower shortage. The Housing and Urban Affairs Department is joining with the Labor Department to retrain up to 2,000 unemployed engineers this summer for work on urban problems. Still, scientific leaders think this is not enough. The president of the American Chemical Society, Dr. Melvin Calvin, for example, wants direct federal salary support ($10,000 a year) to help the jobless as they start new careers.

Last week, after his second recent meeting with industry, professional and university representatives on the unemployment crisis, President Nixon announced a $42 million program, out of existing funds, to retrain and relocate the unemployed. The program, said Labor Secretary James D. Hodgson, reflects Nixon's determination to keep the U.S. "in the forefront of technology."

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