In the June 1996 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Cliff Mass of the University of Washington published the last comprehensive study of undergraduate meteorology enrollment and employment statistics. His article, entitled “Are We Graduating Too Many Atmospheric Scientists?,” examined degree data through 1993. Since then, Twister, the World Wide Web, Hurricane Katrina and global warming have thrust meteorology into the public eye as never before. In this presentation, I examine the significant and largely undocumented changes in the U.S. undergraduate meteorology population and their employment prospects during the past fifteen years and into the near future.

Based on data derived from the AMS/UCAR Curricula in the Atmospheric, Oceanic, Hydrologic, and Related Sciences and U.S. Department of Education statistics, I conclude that the number of meteorology bachelor's degree recipients in the United States has reached levels unprecedented in at least the past 40 years. The best estimate is that there are currently at least 600 and possibly as many as 1,000 meteorology bachelor's recipients per year. Furthermore, their ranks are increasing rapidly, at a rate of approximately 8-11% per year. The number of meteorology majors has also increased at a rate of up to 10% per year since the late 1990s. The number of meteorology bachelor's degree recipients is projected to increase at a rate of approximately 5-12% per year through 2011. This simultaneous combination of record numbers and rapid recent increases is apparently unique to meteorology among the physical sciences.

In contrast, the number of entry-level meteorology positions in the U.S. available each year appears to be no more than about half the number of new degreed meteorologists. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, growth in meteorology employment has been 1.2% per year from 1994-2004 and is expected to be no more than 1.6% per year through 2014. Therefore, the growth in new meteorologists at the B.S. level is currently up to 10 times faster than the growth of jobs for B.S.-level meteorologists.

These numbers and trends portend a steadily increasing oversupply of meteorology graduates versus employment opportunities. I will conclude the presentation with discussion of some possible consequences, as well as some possible responses of the meteorology community to the situation.