I'm an Engineer by profession. I sometimes hear conflicting arguments about the demand for Engineers in the USA both today and in the future. On one hand I see many Engineers laid off and trying to find work. But then I also often hear people talking about high demand for Engineers or how we need more Engineers. To find the truth on the matter I did a little research on the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) website.
The BLS has projections of employment growth and job prospects for various occupations. They estimate the jobs in the industry and forecast if the number of jobs will increase or decrease and by how much. Keep in mind these are just forecasts but they are based on trends and industry wide factors. They should be a fairly realistic expectation but of course there is margin of error with any kind of forecast.
Engineers as a whole are expected to have job growth over the next decade that is "about as fast as average". So that means that the job growth for Engineers will be about equal to the increase in jobs in general.
But Engineers are specialists and there are several distinct occupations within the broad field. The job prospects for the various Engineering specializations varies considerably.
Here is the expected job growth over the next decade for each Engineering specialty from the BLS:
| Aerospace | 10% |
| Agricultural | 14% |
| Biomedical | 72% |
| Chemical | -2% |
| Civil | 24% |
| Computer hardware | 4% |
| Electrical | 2% |
| Electronics | 0% |
| Environmental | 31% |
| Health and Safety | 10% |
| Industrial | 14% |
| Marine | 6% |
| Materials | 9% |
| Mechanical | 6% |
| Mining | 15% |
| Nuclear | 11% |
| Petroleum | 18% |
Those numbers mostly look good since all but one of them is positive. But job growth on average should be in the 7-13% range due to population growth. If we assume that population growth is 7% then a 6% job growth for Mechanical engineers doesn't even keep pace with population growth.
Here is how the growth in Engineering jobs per specialty exceeds a 7% baseline growth:
| Aerospace | 3% |
| Agricultural | 7% |
| Biomedical | 65% |
| Chemical | -9% |
| Civil | 17% |
| Computer hardware | -3% |
| Electrical | -5% |
| Electronics | -7% |
| Environmental | 24% |
| Health and Safety | 3% |
| Industrial | 7% |
| Marine | -1% |
| Materials | 2% |
| Mechanical | -1% |
| Mining | 8% |
| Nuclear | 4% |
| Petroleum | 11% |
Those results are more mixed with several more fields falling below average growth rates. Its great that there is such high demand for Environmental and Biomedical Engineers but there really aren't that many jobs in those specialties relative to the entire profession. To put the job growth in more perspective lets look at it sorted by the size of each Engineering field.
I've added another column on the right to show the current number of jobs for each specialty in the 1000's.
| Growth | # jobs | |
| Civil | 17% | 278 |
| Mechanical | -1% | 238 |
| Industrial | 7% | 214 |
| Electrical | -5% | 157 |
| Electronics | -7% | 143 |
| Computer hardware | -3% | 74 |
| Aerospace | 3% | 71 |
| Environmental | 24% | 54 |
| Chemical | -9% | 31 |
| Health and Safety | 3% | 25 |
| Materials | 2% | 24 |
| Petroleum | 11% | 21 |
| Biomedical | 65% | 16 |
| Nuclear | 4% | 16 |
| Marine | -1% | 8 |
| Mining | 8% | 7 |
| Agricultural | 7% | 2 |
Take a look at just the top 6 specialties that is where 80% of the jobs are. Four of the top six specialties will see job growth that does not keep up with average.
Next time you hear someone talk about the demand for Engineers you should take it with a grain of salt since not all Engineering jobs are in the same demand.
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