STEM, computer workers and their degrees

Credit: Census Bureau

Someone asked a really good question about chemists and computer occupations over at the Chemistry Reddit:

It seems to me that a disproportionate number of chemists end up taking up programming to some extent, and sometimes transfer to that field entirely. Does anybody else feel the same way? And why do you think this would be?

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the Census Bureau's data about this, where they correlate the various STEM degrees and the occupational fields of their degree holders through the American Community Survey. As you can see, the green/teal line is the number of B.S. physical science degree holders who go into occupations classified as "computer workers." As you can see, it's large, but not especially large compared to those who get engineering degrees or computer science degrees.

To get further into the weeds, I calculated the percentages of computer workers for degree holders for the "STEM" fields:

Computers, mathematics and statistics degrees: 43% computer workers
Engineering degrees: 15% computer workers
Physical science degrees: 7% computer workers
Biological, environmental and agricultural sciences degrees: 3% computer workers
Psychology degrees: 3% computer workers
Social sciences degrees: 4% computer workers

Looking at the data, it seems to me to be equivocal. If you compare to "TEM" workers, no, chemists do not end up disproportionately as programmers. However, the data does suggest that, of the "S" fields, the physical sciences disproportionately end up as computer workers.