For years, university administrators, corporations, and government agencies have been predicting an imminent and catastrophic shortage of scientists and engineers.
Conclusion
These doomsdayers are turning out to be wrong.
rephrased: There isn't an imminent and catastrophic shortage of scientists and engineers.
Evidence (since)
There is little noticeable upward pressure on the salaries of scientists and engineers, and unemployment is as high in these fields as in any other.
Evaluate
We should take our time to understand the intended meaning / significance of the premises, because (for me at least) it takes asking myself some questions about the real world, to pretend like I'm a grown up who understands that real world.
What is upward pressure on salaries? That means that something is driving the salaries up. What drives salaries up or down? Laws could do that, if the minimum wage was raised. But that's more like a mandate, than pressure.
What causes downward pressure on prices of retail goods? Competition. If I'm the only gas station in town (like when you drive through Big Sur, California), I can charge $2 / banana, because you don't have any better options.
But if there were a rival gas station across the street who charged $1 per banana, that would put some downward pressure on how I price my bananas.
Similarly, that gas station can pay its employees minimum wage, if there's no competition for those employees. But if there are only 5 people in town eligible to work at this gas station, and the rival across the street is willing to pay them $20 / hr, then that puts upward pressure on the pay (i.e. salary) that I offer.
So labor markets, just like retail markets, operate off principles of supply and demand, and LSAC definitely expects us to have a common sense understanding that low supply or high demand drive up prices.
The "doomsayers" were predicting that there was going to be a labor shortage of scientists and engineers. So if you're a science or engineering firm and are looking to hire a scientist or engineer, there are going to be lots of rival firms competing for the same eligible employees. You're going to have to compete with their salary offers, if you hope to lure one of the rare scientist / engineers to work at your company.
The author is saying,
Why does she mention unemployment being as high as any other field. Why would it matter if unemployment were lower or higher than other fields?
If unemployment were low, that means that almost all the scientists / engineers looking for jobs are finding them. If unemployment were high, that would mean there were too many workers looking for jobs (a surplus of eligible science / engineering workers), a labor surplus.
The doomsayers who thought there wouldn't be enough scientists / engineers would assume that in this field unemployment would be lower than in others, since firms would be so desperate and labor would be in such short supply that all the eligible workers would find jobs. The author is thinking, .
Goal
Because of all the effort it takes to understand this argument, we'd frankly be out of time to dissect the logic. We should probably just head to the answers thinking, .