Past Four Years - Good or Bad for Engineers?

A Not-So-Bumpy Ride for Engineers

It’s no secret. During the past 6+ months, the lives of just about every person, dog and child have turned upside down due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. For those of us that live on this side of the equator, it’s been a tumultuous spring and summer with more than 22 million jobs lost in the United States alone. However, all signs point to the engineering job market riding out the coronavirus storm.

To understand where the engineering job market is today, let’s take a quick look at the past several years:

• In 2014, several years after the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimated that job growth for engineering occupations would be slower (10.6%) than predicted growth for all occupations (14.3%) between 2010 and 2020.
• Then in 2018, the BLS projected that 140,000 new engineering jobs would be created from 2016-2026.

• In 2019, the BLS predicted that engineering jobs would grow by 3 percent between 2019 and 2029, which is on pace with all occupations.

Image credit: by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay

Just as the engineering job market was picking up, COVID-19 entered the world stage and turned our lives and livelihoods on their heads. Likely in response to the pandemic shutdown, the BLS predicted just last month that 74,800 engineering jobs would be added from 2019 to 2029. In response to the global pandemic, more and more companies are looking to technology, robotics and other engineering disciplines to identify solutions for manufacturing, lagging supply chain, and health and safety needs. Experts anticipate that a shift from foreign to domestic manufacturing, coupled with the demand for “artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality, and medical technology, the pandemic is unlikely to slow the growth of the (engineering) industry.”

Image credit: by Nattanan Kanchanaprat from Pixabay

Arguably, one of the best pieces of employment news for this sector is that the average salary for engineering occupations was $81,440 in May 2019. That’s more than twice the salary for all jobs in the economy at $39,810. According to the BLS, job growth will be concentrated in the areas of building and re-building of infrastructure, renewable energy, oil and gas extraction, and robotics.

Anything “Aerospace” always seems to be the epitome of professional achievements-career nirvana if you will-but Petroleum and Computer Hardware Engineering beat out both in this space when it comes to median salaries. That being said, if plentiful jobs are what you seek, the BLS predicted 23 percent job growth for civil engineers in its 2018 Career Outlook. Civil Engineers represent the largest engineering occupation. At the time, Mechanical and Industrial Engineers were a close second and third in projected job growth for engineers. From an industry standpoint, manufacturing offered 578,000+ jobs for engineers in 2016, the most of any industry. The majority of these engineers in manufacturing produced “computer and electronic products, transportation equipment, and machinery.”

For Electrical and Electronics Engineers, job growth was predicted to be on pace with all other occupations from 2019-2029, as of September 2020. The median salary for Electronics Engineers ($105,570) was slightly higher than Electrical Engineers ($98,530), as of May 2019. Roughly 10,800 Electrical and/or Electronics Engineering jobs are expected to be added from 2019 to 2029.

Not to get political, but we can also compare job growth during the current presidency in comparison with the previous presidency. According to data released by the U.S. Department of Labor at the beginning of 2020, experts predicted “better-than-expected growth of 225,000 new jobs vs. the consensus of 158,000.” However, the report also indicated that President Trump’s “best year of job growth was 2.314 million in 2018,” a statistic that fell short of any of President Obama’s last three years in office.

Anti-climate policies can also have a negative impact on engineering job growth. Thankfully, state and local governments, nationally and internationally, are convening to identify issues and create solutions that will benefit developed and developing countries. Attendees of the United Nation’s climate talks in Madrid, Spain, in December 2019, said that it was both welcome and long overdue that engineers were present at public and closed-door sessions. With their training, engineers have the ability to address underlying causes of climate change, design and tailor solutions, and help implement them.

Image credit: by RAEng_Publications from Pixabay

To sum it up, engineering is a bedy bedy good field. OK, maybe some of you aren’t baseball fans, but this is a respectful nod to National Baseball Hall of Famer, Roberto Clemente. Industry experts and policymakers assert that engineering jobs are resilient to economic upsets and periods of unemployment; salaries are higher than the median annual wage for all occupations; and there are opportunities for younger generations, women and minorities to increase their presence in this field.

Engineering jobs were on the rise before the global economy took a pause for the pandemic. But the need for innovation and technology in response to COVID-19 bode well for a healthy bounce back in engineering jobs.

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