The US Doctoral STEM Workforce

Foreign-born share of US-residing employed doctoral scientists and engineers, by field. NSF Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR) 2023.
What this page shows. The NSF SDR is a longitudinal survey of ~80,000 PhD holders that tracks where they work, what they earn, and — crucially — their citizenship status. Unlike IPEDS (which only counts students at the time they earn their degree, and lumps native-born US citizens, naturalized citizens, and permanent residents together as "domestic"), the SDR separates these groups in the post-graduation workforce. This is the most authoritative federal data on what actually happens to PhDs after they graduate.

Foreign-Born Share of the US Doctoral Workforce, by Field

Percentage of US-residing employed doctoral scientists and engineers in each field who are foreign-born (naturalized citizen + permanent resident + temporary visa holder).

Source: NSF SDR 2023, Table 9 · 38.1% of all US doctoral scientists and engineers are foreign-born. Engineering reaches 59.9%. Electrical & Computer Engineering reaches 70.5%.

Citizenship Composition (All PhD Holders)

Of the 73,256 SDR respondents based in the US, 69.5% are native-born US citizens. IPEDS reports the rest of that group as one number. Inside it, 20.2% are naturalized citizens and 7.9% hold a green card.

Source: NSF SDR 2023, citizenship findings

Total US Doctoral Workforce by Field (Native vs Foreign-Born)

Absolute counts: how many PhD holders work in each field, split by birth status.

Source: NSF SDR 2023, Table 9

STEM Workforce by Major Industry — Foreign-Born Share (2023)

NSB 2026 Indicators broaden the lens beyond doctoral holders to the entire STEM workforce (~36 million people). Information services, professional/scientific services, and finance lead in foreign-born STEM share.

Source: NSB 2026 Science & Engineering Indicators, Table STAL-12

Why this matters

Three things this data shows that IPEDS does not:

  1. Permanent residents are real foreign-born workers. IPEDS counts green card holders as "domestic" because at admission they hold permanent residency. But in the workforce, they remain foreign-born — and this is a 7% slice of the doctoral workforce that the IPEDS-only narrative erases entirely.
  2. Naturalized citizens are also foreign-born. Another 20.2% of that group are naturalized citizens — born abroad, came to the US, eventually became US citizens. IPEDS lumps them with native-born Americans, hiding the immigration story behind the workforce.
  3. The temporary-visa share understates dependence on foreign talent. Only 3% of the workforce is on temporary visas right now, but that's because most foreign-born workers transition off temporary status into permanent residency or citizenship over their careers. The "temporary share" is a flow, not a stock.

The bottom line: 38.1% of the 908,700 doctoral scientists and engineers working in the US are foreign-born. In Electrical & Computer Engineering it is 70.5%. These are stocks, not flows — they're the people doing the work today.

Source documents (not yet parsed into the dashboard)

The following NSF datasets are downloaded under data/nsf_workforce/: