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To develop and harness technological capabilities to meet its missions, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) seeks ways to improve acquisition and retention of technical talent from science, technical, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Congress and DoD policymakers point to higher compensation in the private sector as a key challenge. However, a prior RAND Corporation report suggests that the average compensation difference between private- and public-sector STEM workers is not that large when workforce characteristics are considered. This same research shows that there are demographic-group differences (gender, racial and ethnic) in compensation for STEM workers. Given Congressional and DoD interest in employing more STEM workers — and federal government interest in promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility more generally — demographic-group differences in the DoD STEM workforce warrant in-depth understanding. Building on previous RAND research, the authors use several years of DoD civilian workforce data to quantify trends in demographic-group compensation differences and other employment‐related outcomes among the DoD civilian STEM workforce. The authors provide an overview of the composition of the DoD civilian STEM workforce, then perform an analysis that controls for observable characteristics, such as education, that might explain those group differences. Next, they describe the compensation implications of the demographic composition of civilian pay plans and explore compensation differences while holding DoD component, geographic location, and STEM occupational category constant. They conclude with key findings and recommendations for DoD to better understand and address demographic-related inequalities within its STEM workforce.

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) increasingly seeks fixed-price contracts for Public Assistance expenditures to help communities rebuild after disaster. FEMA and those communities have large incentives to estimate costs correctly before contracts are signed. One challenge to providing an accurate estimate of construction costs is that the cost of rebuilding can be affected by the reconstruction effort itself. One way to account for such changes is to use a future price forecast (FPF) factor, which adjusts a project's cost estimate to account for overall price-level increases caused by a disaster. The purpose of this study was to help FEMA identify when to use an FPF. To carry out the study, the authors convened panels of experts to discuss scenarios of hypothetical disasters-in particular, how these disasters could affect local economies. They also tested a variety of community and disaster-related measures that might be predictive of large cost increases and explored the relationship between different types of skills and labor-mobility variables and disaster effects on construction costs. They then estimated how often disasters cause large increases in construction costs and identified criteria to use in determining when an FPF might be warranted. They also explored the implications of these criterion thresholds by estimating FPFs in some what-if scenarios.