AIP Research Team Launches Interactive Visualization of 25 Years of Federal Physical Sciences and Engineering Employment Data
A new dashboard from AIP’s research team provides statistics about federal employees in the physical sciences and engineering. This resource is a key part of delivery on AIP’s 2025 Research Agenda .
Using data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) FedScope , the team created an interactive map of the U.S. representing over 170,000 federal workers employed in the physical sciences and engineering in September of 2024.
“These data are incredibly important for the science community,” said data scientist senior specialist John Tyler. “The interactive visualizations provide a starting point for parsing the wealth of information contained within the FedScope employment data cubes.”
The dashboard includes data for the number of employees, average salary, length of service, distribution by age group, and proportion eligible for retirement each year.
A new dashboard from AIP’s research team provides statistics about federal employees in the physical sciences and engineering.
AIP
Federal physical science and engineering employees reside in all 50 states, as well as U.S. territories and other countries. The most recent data shows that the largest number of these workers are employed in California, Virginia, and Maryland.
“These visualizations are powerful tools for anyone interested in understanding the physical science and engineering enterprise in the United States,” said AIP’s Chief Research Officer, Trevor Owens. “By seeing 25 years of data all together at once, it is possible to see just how dramatic and unprecedented current efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce are.”
The tool also provides a graphic view of the number of federal employees in engineering and physical sciences from 1998 to 2024. The data can be sorted by agency or specific occupation code. The graphs do not, however, include employees of federally funded research and development centers.
The dashboard also includes the agencies worked in, retirement eligibility, and job types of federal employees in the physical sciences over the years. While the total number of employees has stayed mostly stable over this 25-year period, the age distribution, average length of service, and average salary of employees within that total varies considerably over the years.
