This report looks at where people are working in STEM fields, what jobs they were doing, how much they were earning, and whether age, gender, place of residence, or background played a role in these employment outcomes. This report explores in great detail the diversity of Australians with STEM qualifications and the education and workforce experiences of these different groups.

Key Findings:

• The STEM graduate labour force participation rate decreased by 3 percentage points between 2011 and 2016. This difference reflects the ageing of the STEM graduate population, with many people moving into retirement age over this period.
• The number of university STEM qualified people increased between 2011 and 2016 across almost all fields and age brackets, with the exception of people with Agriculture and Environmental Science qualifications in the 25 to 34 age bracket.
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are under-represented in STEM, particularly at the university level, where 0.5% of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population had a STEM qualification, compared to 5% of the non-Indigenous population.
• Of the broad STEM fields, Science was the only one close to gender parity—51% of the labour force with a university qualification in Science were male and 49% were female (data not shown). More detailed analysis shows that females made up the majority of the graduate labour force in three of the six narrow fields of Science.
• For people with VET STEM qualifications, a greater percentage were born in Australia than outside of Australia across all fields. At both VET and university levels of education, the Information Technology qualified population had the highest percentage of people who spoke a language other than English at home.