R&D (research and development) recruiting increases are the key to more future high paying jobs and revolutionary new products. Despite the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reporting employers having a second straight month of U.S. employment gains with 379,000 overall jobs added February, research and development can provide a lot more!
The unemployment rate did drop .1% to 6.2% last month. This is well down from a 14.8% peak in April 2020, but remains above pre-pandemic levels, when unemployment was near 50-year lows.
However, increased research and development spending can be a catalyst for a lot more high paying jobs and product breakthroughs. This is the case since research and development job candidates continue to be in extreme high demand and very short supply.
Furthermore, almost 94% of overall job gains or 355,000 jobs came from the Leisure and Hospitality sector, including restaurants, which are very low paying jobs. Research and development jobs pay and provide a lot more for job candidates and our economy.
China Investing Heavily In R&D | U.S. Needs To Increase R&D
With outcries for higher minimum wages, more efforts need to be made to invest in research and development. This is exactly what China is doing now.
According to the recent Work Report from the Fourth Session of the 13th National People’s Congress, China said it will increase its annual research and development spending by more than 7% every year over the next five years. Additionally, the Chinese said they will increase expenditure on basic research by 10.6% in 2021, the report added.
R&D Creates Breakthroughs And Higher Paying Jobs
Research and development is a ticket to future innovations and huge salary jobs! R&D jobs fuel cutting-edge discoveries in industries such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality or VR, augmented reality or AR, robotics and internet of things or IoT. R&D has also been the engine behind the swift development of covid vaccines.
For example, scientists at MIT are now trying to build a robot with the agility of a mosquito. These tiny but mighty flying robots could be used in life-and-death situations, such as finding people in a collapsed building.
Reseacher Kevin Chen says he spends “a lot of time looking at the flapping-wing physics, that is understanding how an insect can flap their wings and generate lift and drag forces.“
Chen, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, leads a team that’s invented a new microdrone, which is not quite as tiny as a mosquito, but pretty close!
He envisions a time when his drone could be used as a search and rescue robot — to find survivors in disaster debris that bigger drones couldn’t reach. For example, in a building collapse with people trapped inside.
But the drones could have other potential uses. Chen sees them artificially pollinating crops or carrying small cameras to inspect turbine engines. Big jobs, with tiny mechanical workers to carry them out.
This is the beauty of research and development. Engineering new breakthroughs that we can only dream of today. In the process, making our lives easier and safer!
More Efforts Needed For Recruiting Research and Development
More efforts need to be employed by federal, state and local governments for recruiting research and development scientists, chemists, engineers and other R&D technical candidates. For example, greater investments in developing STEM programs including recruiting more talented STEM teachers for minting future research and development talent.
Additionally, within companies, staffing departments need to improve their research and development recruitment efforts. One way to achieve this is reviewing your company’s overall message to ensure that you have positioned yourselves as a viable place for engineers to work.
Furthermore, staffing managers need to identify better methods for recruiting candidates for their companies. This can include a) identifying competitors b) uncovering viable research and development candidates within those competitors c) contributing to research and development blogs and magazines to get noticed by the research and development candidates you seek and d) connecting to LinkedIn candidates who may become future candidates.
If not, we will be surpassed by China, which is rigorously investing in R&D. Moreover, we will lose our standing as a leading nation and not provide our citizens with ample high paying jobs that research and development provides!
For more information click here for my full contact information or call me today at 312-944-4000. Then we can discuss how to improve your research and development, engineering, scientific, technical, IT and manufacturing recruitment efforts in the highly competitive fields of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Internet of Things (IoT) as well as Virtual (and Augmented) Reality.
