The 2026 US Talent Report: Benchmarking America’s STEM Pipeline amid the Great Talent Competition

<jats:p>The United States-China technology competition is usually measured in chips, data centers, satellites, supply chains, and weapons. But every technological breakthrough depends on a key input that is harder to develop, stockpile, or replace: people. Scientists, engineers, researchers, and founders determine which ideas become discoveries, which discoveries become products, and which countries lead. Yet national talent in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) remains one of the most important—and least systematically measured—dimensions of the competition. America’s STEM talent advantage has never rested on a single asset. It is a system: schools that develop talent at home, universities that attract it from abroad, laboratories and companies that put it to work, and immigration pathways that determine whether it stays and flourishes. Most assessments examine these pieces separately. This index measures them together. It assembles decades of data from dozens of federal surveys, international databases, research rankings, publication and patent records, visa filings, and company histories. It analyzes evidence covering hundreds of thousands of students, graduates, researchers, workers, and founders across fields, countries, institutions, and stages of the talent pipeline. No dataset captures the whole picture, and important measurement gaps remain. But taken together, this evidence provides the most comprehensive assessment to date of how America develops, attracts, deploys, and retains the STEM talent that powers its economic and national security. The data reveal a powerful system whose advantages remain substantial—but whose vulnerabilities are becoming harder to ignore.</jats:p>