Although recent trends in the unemployment rate have shown slight improvements for Black and Hispanic workers, wage gaps continue to persist when comparing these groups to non-Hispanic white men. Increasing costs of living has made these disparities even more prevalent as Black and Hispanic workers tend to have less access to employment-related benefits such paid family and medical leave, health care coverage, unemployment insurance, retirement and other traditional employment benefits. Factors such as education, work experience, immigration status, and discrimination have all been found to contribute to these disparities. Finding ways to promote higher paying, stable employment for these groups requires long-term targeted interventions that continue to be at the forefront of many research agendas.

One recent trend that has the potential to contribute to enhancing Black and Hispanic access to better employment opportunities is the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) movement. Many STEM related jobs require a 4-year college degree which contributes to higher median earnings and salaries relative to non-STEM related areas. However, even the STEM jobs that do not require a 4-year degree have been found to have 10 percent higher wages than non-STEM jobs with similar educational requirements (Rothwell, 2013). This is important because about half of all STEM jobs do not require a Bachelor’s degree and are more geographically available (Brookings Institution). In addition, the number of STEM related careers has been on the rise for the past several decades and is projected to grow by 10.4 percent between 2023 and 2033. Taken together, the job opportunities in STEM fields can be seen as a possible means for improving the quality of life for many Black and Hispanic families.

Given that there has already been some focus on increasing the diversity of workers in STEM related occupations, research on the factors that influence students to pursue these types of careers is abundant. For the past several decades, various frameworks and models have been developed to better understand the academic and career choices of students and more recently, to better understand how those choices differ for underrepresented groups. In particular, the social cognitive career theory (SCCT) hypothesizes that personal, contextual, and social cognitive factors influence the development of career interests, selection of career goals, and career behaviors. Over the past couple of decades, SCCT has continued to be the major theoretical framework investigating factors that have contributed to the underrepresentation of women and racial–ethnic minorities in STEM fields. This paper attempts to contribute to this literature by examining contextual and environmental factors that are hypothesized to influence STEM career choice. Using survey responses from the American Trends Panel (ATP) Wave 100 - Black and Hispanic Perspectives on Science and Society, results revealed that on average environmental factors have some influence on STEM career choice for respondents in this study. In particular, Blacks and Hispanics were more likely to be working in a STEM related fields if at some point during their academic career they were encouraged to keep taking courses in these fields and if they were helped to see ways these subjects could be useful for their job or career.

Keywords: STEM, minority, career, education.