Estimating the need for PhDs in the academic , public and private sectors of Estonia

The doctoral workforce in all countries around the world constitutes a rather small segment of the labour market; however, PhDs provide a crucial input for educational and R&D activities not only through their employment in the academic sector, but nowadays also increasingly in the public and private sector. The aim of the current paper is to estimate the need for new PhDs in the Estonian academic, public and private sectors for the 5-year period 2007-2012. The need in the academic and public sectors is estimated from the survey of employers (universities, research institutes, ministries etc.), the need in private sector is derived from the forecasted expenditure on R&D in the business sector. Our results show that expectedly the demand for PhDs is in public and private sectors significantly lower than in academic sector. The total demand over 3 sectors is rather high, annually more than 10% of the current number of PhDs, caused both by the high replacement demand brought on by retirements in the next years and the growth demand. The policy implication of our results is that the planned increase in the numbers of PhDs should be in accordance with other developments in educational and R&D policy. JEL Classification: I2, J4, 03