The slight upward trend in STEM activity measured by the first U.S. News/Raytheon STEM Index continued in 2014, according to new data analyzed by U.S. News & World Report. However, multi-million dollar initiatives by both the public and the private sectors have failed to close gender and racial gaps in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.

The STEM Employment Index shows the change in the number of STEM jobs relative to all jobs in the US. Overall, STEM increased 20% since 2000, the largest increase of all the sub-indices. Petroleum engineers were in hot demand as advances in hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – and horizontal drilling opened more than a million oil and gas wells across the US.

Computer jobs held the top seven positions for highest number of employees, with applications software engineers and computer support specialists topping the list. Jobs for computer support specialists, systems analysts, systems administrators and systems software engineers are also on the rise. Notably, the number of computer programmer jobs declined more than 40% from 2000 through 2014, but still beat the rest of the index by a wide margin.

The 2015 STEM Index shows that while employment and degrees granted in STEM fields have improved since 2000, gaps between men and women and between whites and minorities in STEM remain deeply entrenched. Mathematics remains the Achilles' heel of STEM fields: Across all demographic groups, interest in mathematics has declined since 2000.

Gender gap

The gender gap in engineering and technology fields is already well-formed by high school, according to the report. In 2014, only 3% of high school females reported an interest in engineering, compared to 31% of males. In the same year, just 2% of girls reported an interest in technology, while 15% of boys expressed an interest in the field. .

At the college and graduate levels, more women earned STEM degrees each year, but they kept pace — rather than catching up — with their male counterparts. In 2014, 6% of associate degrees and 13% of bachelor's degrees granted to females were in a STEM field. By contrast, 20% of associate degrees and 28% of bachelor's degrees granted to males were in STEM fields.

At the graduate level, 10% of graduate degrees earned by females in 2014 were in STEM fields, while 24% of graduate degrees granted to males were STEM degrees.

Race gaps

While high school interest in science has increased among white, black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American students, gaps between whites and non-Asian minorities in STEM appear in high school and continue into college and graduate school.

From 2009 to 2014, the percentage of bachelor's degrees granted to white students in STEM rose to 19.5% from16.8%. Over the same time period, the percentage of bachelor's degrees granted to black students in STEM rose more slowly, to 13.6% in 2014 from 12.7% in 2009.

The STEM Index, developed by U.S. News & World Report with support from Raytheon, provides a national snapshot of STEM jobs and education. The index measures key indicators of economic- and education-related STEM activity in the US since the year 2000.