A Waste of Talent: Engineering Under-Employment in Canada 6

[moltenmetal]

The Ontario Society of Professional Engineers has (finally) released a new report, giving evidence of the massive under-employment of engineering grads and immigrants here in Canada.

http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/

http://www.ospe.on.ca/resource/resmgr/DOC_advocacy/2015_REPORT_Underemployment_.pdf

Per the census data evaluated in the report, more people possessing degrees in engineering are employed in jobs which do not require a university degree of any kind (much less an engineering degree), than are employed as engineers. More are under-employed (33% of grads) than are properly employed (29%). The fraction of the rest (who are working in something requiring a degree, but not necessarily an engineering degree) are just ignored, because we can't know from the data how many of them chose the job they're in rather than being forced into it. But what we also know is this: a survey of 4th year students here consistently shows about 92% of these students INTEND a career in engineering. It's impossible to imagine that 70% of them change their minds entirely by choice. And if they are making that choice voluntarily, they're doing it against their economic interests: the report also finds that while some engineering grads escape to greener pastures in non-engineering management, those eng grads working outside engineering earn far less, on average, than those who do.

The graph at the bottom of page 8 should tell the story quite clearly to any engineer: the proportion of engineering grads working in engineering has been in dramatic decline over the 20 years studied. Why? Supply growth, both by means of immigration and increased graduation rates, which massively out-stripped economic growth and retirement/replacement demand. Engineering now has the lowest match rate, i.e. the proportion of its graduates working in the field for which they were educated, of any of the regulated professions- by far. That's a far cry from the public perception of engineering being a profession in demand!

Employers here still b*tch publicly about "skills shortages". They are short the people with 10 years of relevant experience that they themselves didn't hire as fresh grads 10 years ago. No quantity of fresh grads or fresh immigrants could fix that situation, but since more of these people suppress wages for everyone, they're not going to complain about that.

Fortunately, the profession has woken from its stupor and is finally saying something about this. I've known about it, and had the data to demonstrate what was going on, for more than a decade. But too many of us, engineers particularly, believe our own anecdotal experience to the point that we're not interested in the data. The data tells the real story, in unambiguous terms.

 

[woodman88]

"Employers here still b*tch publicly about "skills shortages". They are short the people with 10 years of relevant experience that they themselves didn't hire as fresh grads 10 years ago. No quantity of fresh grads or fresh immigrants could fix that situation, but since more of these people suppress wages for everyone, they're not going to complain about that."

This is the same in all the employment fields I have heard from the people working in them.

Garth Dreger PE - AZ Phoenix area
As EOR's we should take the responsibility to design our structures to support the components we allow in our design per that industry standards.

 

[2dye4]

When I started engineering 25 yrs ago and demand was high I was kinda struck by how many jobs were called
engineering which really didn't use any of the 4 year degree. I though " they don't need engineers for this"

Now I think it has come to light. Two year college and associate degrees are able to do large swaths of the work
that employers use to hire ABET accredited engineers for. And who can blame them. So while we still crank out
4 year ABET graduates who cannot find work making proper pay the president calls for more community college.

This is what the physical stuff industry ( everything except software ) wants more of to fill the $15.00/ hr slot.

I am definitely NOT optimistic. Technology is a double edges sword for engineers. We get work putting others out
of work but then many new technologies do the same to us.

Today more factory automation technology is plug and play with lower and lower skill levels needed.

It seems to make the situation where only the very best get to engineer anything anymore.

 

[GregLocock]

Yes, but then that is what we are supposed to do, develop methods so that we can do our jobs better, or someone else can do our job and get the right answer. Perhaps the (unpleasant) truth is that you don't need a structural engineer to design a portal frame shed.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[1gibson]

The scary part is that it isn't a waste of talent, it's a waste of potential. The talent hasn't had a chance to develop, and possibly never will.

 

[moltenmetal]

Way back in high school, the problem of automation became quite clear to me. I worked in an injection molding plant during the summers, where cheap operators (like me) did the manual parts-handling tasks that were needed to keep up the productivity of the expensive molding machines: demolding parts, fixturing them for cooling, cutting parts off sprues and sorting them into boxes by type etc. At the time, these folks were cheaper and more flexible to short parts runs than the automation that even then could have replaced them. These folks had no education and no skills and earned a pittance- but they likely didn't have too many other options. It seemed at the time to me that these "jobs" were beneath human dignity- when you think about what a person is capable of, reducing them to performing the same mechanical tasks done in sequence on a 25 second cycle, 8 hours per day, seems so trivial that it's on the verge of being inhumane. But it was also clear to me that those jobs were going by the wayside as automation improved, and that the people doing them had few economic options. I didn't see that outsourcing to China would be the real destination of much of this type of work- cheaper people instead of better machines...But it did get me thinking about the inevitable result of "productivity improvement": there would be no possible way for consumption to keep up with our ability to make things faster with fewer and fewer people.

Even then, it was also clear to me that unless we had a better way to redistribute wealth, the people with no skills or education (which there will always be) would end up on the scrapheap- the profit would go into the hands of the business owners and society at large would be responsible for the upkeep of the people left behind. It was also crystal clear to me that the same would eventually happen further and further up the value chain. So while I was very motivated by that experience to become a robot-designer rather than person who would be replaced by the robots, it was also obvious that this hiding place too would be temporary. It's shocking to me now that I had this figured out so young...

By no means do I think engineering is unique in regard to being massively oversupplied with candidates relative to the number of real jobs available for them. But it's clear that we've been victims of magical thinking on a number of fronts. Our parents, who saw how hard it was to keep a blue collar job going into your 60s, wanted us all to get an education so we could get a "real job". We've imagined that our economy could generate so many cushy white-collar job opportunities that the limiting factor was merely educating more people to fill them. In fact, these opportunities are precious, being generated no faster than the economy can grow, and are in shorter and shorter supply as productivity increases, but we've been exporting them via both outsourcing and economic immigration with wanton abandon.

It's clear to me that we should cease economic immigration of "skilled workers" immediately. When we can generate more than sufficient numbers of educated people to fill the positions available, it makes zero sense. There will always be in-transfers from branch to branch of multinational corporations, and people with pre-arranged jobs, and those folks don't concern me- but the mass in-migration of educated people per this idiotic "human capital" immigration scheme that Canada has, just makes my blood boil. You guys in the US have a much better system with the H1B visa, as easy to exploit as that system is! Employers should be forced (because they will not do it willingly!) to take people at the entry level and train them, or to re-train more senior people displaced from other industries. But right now, businesses have the ear of government, and governments only know how to turn the supply taps in one direction.

The sad thing is, even with a total ban on in-migration, we'd still be graduating more engineering candidates than are needed for the replacement demand and economic growth by a large margin. That's a societal problem of enormous magnitude in my opinion. But the first step to solving any problem is acknowledging that it exists, and we're just starting with that!

 

[2dye4]

""Even then, it was also clear to me that unless we had a better way to redistribute wealth, the people with no skills or education (which there will always be) would end up on the scrapheap- the profit would go into the hands of the business owners and society at large would be responsible for the upkeep of the people left behind.""

Yes 100% correct. How to resolve it is one helluva question. I wonder if world leaders somewhere are working on this.

Why is this simple truth so "under the radar" today. New types of jobs being created today cater mostly to those on the upper side of the bell curve
in intelligence and those toward to the low end of the curve are being, and will continue to be, ground up in the machine.

The limit to economic growth is not what we can build or make but what we would actually trade our labor to buy. A large portion of the economy
now is in "toys" in my opinion. Entertainment through gadgets. Will people grow tired of working to keep up with the latest gadget??

 

[moltenmetal]

2dye4- absolutely. I wonder what will underpin this new economy where goods creation is for the most part taken out of the picture. People can't just trade services to one another- at some point, somebody making goods has to trade virtually the entire value of the goods they made for the services of others. It makes no sense to me- it seems like the fundamental value creation that underpins the whole works is becoming disconnected. And as far as outsourcing is concerned, the likes of Apple survive by making a huge margin on the cheap labours of others, keeping almost all of that margin for themselves- same with apparel and numerous other things where style trumps underlying substance. It seems unlikely that such a system can continue in the long term either.

It's also clear I just don't understand economics at all. I'd argue that I'm in pretty good company- that nobody really understands it. It is merely used to explain things after they've happened.

 

[HDS]

I once looked at the graduates of the engineering institute that went to on Linkedin to see how many were still engineers. I do not remember the exact numbers but after about 5-10 years they started to drop off. By 15 to 20 years they were really low.

One biggest problems behind these problems is that so few people go into school knowing anything about what a job in their field of study is like.

However, It is interesting that we expect a high number people with engineering degrees to be engineers. Other fields of study, like history or English, expect all most none of their graduates to wind up in their field of study. I wonder what the data would look like for psychology or a liberal arts degrees?

 

[moltenmetal]

"It is interesting that we expect a high number people with engineering degrees to be engineers. Other fields of study, like history or English, expect all most none of their graduates to wind up in their field of study. I wonder what the data would look like for psychology or a liberal arts degrees?"

We expect a significant number of engineering grads to work as engineers because engineering school is training for a profession- it is not anything like a liberal arts degree! Furthermore, that's what the kids are being told, or rather sold, along with they popular myth that there is a shortage of engineers, in order to convince them to enroll. Parroting a myth is one thing, but denying the data when it's in front of your face is another- we'll have to see if the tune changes after this is shoved under the noses of various people in government.

From the report, p. 8

Employed Canadian residents in sample
Total Match Rate (%)
Optometry 3,100 89
Chiropractics 6,090 87
Medicine 43,905 81
Occupational therapy 9,905 81
Dentistry 14,215 78
Physiotherapy 14,475 76
Pharmacy 24,780 75
nursing 92,030 71
Veterinary medicine 8,805 69
Law 93,910 62
Teaching 444,655 59
Diet/nutrition 3,660 55
Architecture 21,555 45
Accounting 114,855 43
[highlight #FCAF3E]Engineering 325,190 31[/highlight]
Total 1,221,130 53

This data is from 2006- the last time we will ever get good, granular census data on this due to the deliberate destruction of the National Household Survey by our lovely Convervative Federal government. Understandable, as it's tough to make policy based on ideology if there is pesky data available to challenge it with! In this data, you can see that engineering had the lowest match rate of any regulated profession, and not just by a little. Even teaching, which had been in oversupply for at least a decade by the time this survey was taken, had almost twice the match rate that engineering had.

You cannot argue that there's something unique about engineering that makes it better suited as a pre-training for other fields of work than, say, medicine, nursing, law or teaching. Rather, those fields all manage to place a much higher proportion of their graduates in work more directly suited to their training, simply because of supply and demand. The engineering profession has been dead silent about this- until now.

The situation has gotten nothing but worse since 2006: the proportion of engineering grads to engineering jobs can be extracted from the census data we do have, and the trend is unmistakeable. The slope of supply growth curve is several times that of the slope of the demand growth curve, which is obvious at a glance. Regrettably I can't post the graph here for formatting reasons, but it too is on p. 8 of the report.

Contrast that to the survey of 4th year engineering students in Ontario: 92% of them either definitely or probably intend to seek engineering work on graduation. Only 8% of them either definitely or probably would NOT seek engineering work. So the notion that half or three-quarters of these kids having already decided to pursue work outside of engineering, is not borne out by the data. Nope- most of them are never getting a foothold in the profession in the first place, despite wanting to- and over time, even more leave as HDS has noted. And if they're leaving by choice, they're doing so against their financial interest as noted previously, since the average income of the ones who gain entry to and remain in engineering is significantly higher than that of those who don't- even though some of that latter category include people like CEOs and patent lawyers etc. who clearly are not hurting for cash.

Some engineering educators have indeed begun calling engineering "the new liberal arts education", which makes my blood boil. What they mean is that since the proportion of engineering graduates to engineering job opportunities has been climbing so steadily and dramatically over the years as a result of increased engineering enrollments and engineering immigration, they no longer feel any responsibility to link the type of education they provide to the intended work outcome of the kids taking their program. If that is the case, they should be shouting it from the bloody rooftops in 1st year so the kids have the information to make an informed decision!

While no education is a waste, it is indeed a waste of societal resources (via tuition and university operating subsidy) to train 3x as many people for a profession than the profession could possibly employ. We need to get real about this quickly.

 

[jgailla]

moltenmetal,
In some ways this is good for engineering graduates. There are many companies, particularly financial, who like to hire engineering graduates because of their analytical skills. This makes an engineering degree more versatile than many other technical degrees, particularly medical degrees. I have two acquaintances who are doing very well in non-engineering jobs. They would not have gotten these jobs with a liberal arts degree as opposed to an engineering degree.
A pharmacy or nursing graduate, let alone a liberal arts graduate, has fewer transferable skills. I would like to see those numbers 30 years ago.

I completely agree with you on the larger point that there seems to be a lot of talk about an engineering shortage when there clearly hasn't been one in some time.
All of my friends with engineering degrees seem to have landed on their feet with decent paying jobs, whether in or out of engineering.

Finance seems to be where the money's at.

 

[rotw]

This subject acts like an eraser of your good mood.
One reading is ok. Three iterations put you in a state of profound depression.


"If you want to acquire a knowledge or skill, read a book and practice the skill".

 

[Sparweb]

This report is surprising, and shatters some of my own beliefs.
While I've always said that kids should go study engineering only if they're really interested in it, I've also said that this field of study has benefits even if the graduate doesn't end up working there. Apparently few financial benefits, according to these results.

One thing I'd like to point out, and I think a mathematical formula is appropriate:

engineering degree ≠ engineering job

There are some degrees where there is no job prospect at all (arts, philosophy, history) but the professions given the most attention in the report are more thoroughly regulated, like medicine and law. Fulfilling those roles requires a degree because the regulations of that profession are set up with that assumption. Engineering is just on the knife-edge: it can be done by those who don't have the degree but do have the skills (I am one of them) but engineering does not enjoy the depth of partnership that hospitals have with medical schools.

Is there any traction for the idea of an engineering "practicum" or "residency"? It would go above and beyond the scope of a "co-op" or "internship".

To make matters worse, for the prospective student considering his/her options, or the prospective immigrant, the playing field is uneven.

engineering job ≠ engineering degree

On the part of the employer there is a game of "specsmanship" played, where the applicant for a job must be perfect. We just have to specify the required qualifications as exactly as possible, to get the perfect candidate, right? I've looked at many job ads over the years, and so many of them are crammed with jargon. It smacks of a weak will in management, inability to communicate, people doing their job not understanding their business.

So I see a relationship between the two factors where, on the one hand, only a fraction of grads actually get their foot in the door, and stay, and on the other, where managers and HR select their engineers on the basis of a very narrow set of skills. Against these odds, I can see many many young grads, with their energy and creative minds, arriving on the shore of the sea of cubicles, turn back without taking the plunge, or deciding to get out after briefly testing the water.

So it sounds like we're doing it to ourselves.

STF

 

[KENAT]

"Is there any traction for the idea of an engineering "practicum" or "residency"? It would go above and beyond the scope of a "co-op" or "internship"."

SparWeb, it could be argued the EIT/FE + experience before sitting for PE license approximate to this - at least in the non exempt industry (US) or in jurisdictions which don't really have the same exemption and most engineers are required to get PE equivalent etc..

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[Sparweb]

Hi Kenat,
This varies from country to country, state to state, etc. of course. Could you elaborate on the "exempt industry" that you refer to (I'm not an american, but I do get mistaken for one when travelling abroad). If I take your meaning correctly, to get one's PE licence one has to actually have some experience, not just the degree. Yes, I see the parallel, and the same applies here in Canada. But I think many of the practicing engineers in Canada don't actually have a PE license. Those whose employer doesn't require it may not bother to get it, and those whose employer doesn't pay the annual dues, may not maintain it.

Frankly I don't know why the idea of an engineering residency doesn't have a stronger foothold, since many tradespeople (often overseen by engineers I might add) like welders and vehicle mechanics will work as apprentices before gaining their certificate. If trades do it, and other professions like medicine do it, almost universally, then why don't more engineers?

Did anybody notice in the list of professions being compared, that 2/3 were health-related? Is there maybe an economic or regulatory factor at play that cannot be discerned by the analysis, but gives the health professions an advantage in matching the grads to the jobs?


STF

 

[moltenmetal]

I agree: this topic makes me depressed. And angry. That our profession has totally abdicated its responsibility to its future members is disgusting to me.

A practicum or residency or other formal internship would produce far better engineers than the current system does. As it is, the eng students who get co-op experience are head and shoulders better prepared for the workforce than those who only have a list of summer jobs behind them. A formal regulated internship would also help to repair the broken transition between graduation and work, because it would be clear that any number of students who graduate beyond the number of internship spaces available would be surplus to the labour market and would have to find other work. Getting government to acknowledge that as any kind of problem worth fixing would still be difficult though, with all those eng educators talking about engineering as "the new liberal arts education"...

There is zero likelihood of such a system ever being put in place in Canada in my opinion.

Regrettably, even the anaemic licensure experience requirement we have in Canada is under threat and being eroded. In Ontario the current requirement for licensure is an accredited degree plus four years of total engineering experience prior, of which at least 1 year must be obtained in Canada under the supervision of someone already licensed (so they can assess the candidate's suitability for the legal and ethical responsibilities of licensure, not just their technical skill or competence). The other three years can include up to one year of pre-grad work experience (i.e. co-op work), and can be partially or entirely gained outside Canada subject to an experience review. As minimal, and in my view absolutely necessary as this requirement is, it is under threat as a "barrier to entry into the profession" for foreign-trained engineers, because of the rather obvious "no experience-no job-no experience" catch-22. Of course, this point of view arises DIRECTLY from belief in the myth of a shortage of engineers: if there were a real shortage, the only reason foreign trained engineers (FTEs) would be out of a job would be a deliberate or systematic effort on the part of employers to exclude them, i.e. as a result of racism or xenophobia. In reality, the reason these folks can't find work is that there are simply far, far too many of them for the number of suitable jobs. That our own local grads ALSO fail to gain entrance to our profession sadly is not viewed as any kind of problem!

It also presumes that you need a license to get work here. Licensure is NOT a requirement for employment at all, as a result of the C of A (where one signatory engineer can take responsibility for all professional engineering done by an entire firm), and the industrial exemption. The only person you have to convince about your credentials is your boss or their HR department- the only time you really need a license is when you're self-employed or working as either the sole engineer (as a prerequisite to get a C of A) or one of a handful in a small firm.

A requirement for a license is used by some employers as an easy alternative to actually assessing a foreign-trained engineer's credentials and experience though, and hence the complaint. People at the licensure bodies who are actually knowledgeable about the thousands of degree granting engineering programs worldwide are more qualified to make the assessment of whether or not a person's degree is equivalent or superior to that of a Canadian B.A.Sc. than any employer might be. The alternative, making ALL candidates for licensure write all ten 3-hour technical exams irrespective of where they went to school, is not appealing to anybody!

It is also quite clear that giving licenses to all comers with no review process whatsoever would NOT all of a sudden improve the employment prospects for foreign-trained engineers here. Rather, it would actually HURT the reputation of the good FTEs who have made it successfully through the licensure review process. Furthermore, the licensure body here in Ontario will grant a "provisional license" to a candidate who has met all the requirements for licensure EXCEPT for the 1 year of Canadian experience, which in most cases will satisfy a prospective employer's concerns about a candidates' credentials and qualification for a future license.

 

[KENAT]

SparWeb, I tried to allow for difference in terminology etc.

Basically the countries systems I'm vaguely familiar with there is some 'experience' requirement to become a PE, PEng, CEng or whatever the local term is.

Now, whether the PE, PEng, CEng or whatever is/should be needed to practice engineering is another matter for another time and place - there are enough previous threads littered with the remains of that poor equine.

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[BJC]

In the late 19th and Early 2oth century people worked many more hours a week than they do now.
Productivity is now much higher and we don't need near as many people to provide the goods and services society needs.
Solutions? 1.) Just let the 30-40% of the population not needed draw well fare and morph into some 3 rd world country?
or 2.) Reduce the work week and employee more people?
0r 3.) Reduce the work year to 9 months. The 3 months off would be spent one month each in vacation, public service and continuing education.
The problem is structural it's going to take a radical fix.

 

[moltenmetal]

BJC: One thing is sure -we can't do what we're doing now, which is to allow substantially all the profit of the increased productivity go to less than 1% of the population. Otherwise, we won't have any money to do any of the things you've listed as 1, 2 or 3 above.

Without the progressive taxation to pay for something else, you end up with 4) 30-40% of the population become a poor underclass, surviving on charity or crime.

I remember seeing those predictions of the 50s and 60s- people were worried about what we would do with all the extra leisure time that we'd be getting. Nobody was worried about how to pay for it- it was assumed that the new distribution of wealth and income championed by the Great Generation coming home from the 2nd World War would just keep the good times rolling.

 

[davefitz]

I think the plight of degreed engineers not employed as engineers may be only a subset of the overall employment base, as the entire employment base is affected by the immigration policies of the gov't. While I suspect this is related to the plain fact that the gov't ministers play golf and have dinner and discuss policy only with business leaders and not with lowly employees, it is possible that there is some theoretical rationale that can be used to justify the obvious objective of ensuring competition for good jobs and its effect on lowering wages. At least the rationale pays for the golf game and dinner ( and other inducements) .

The risk associated with increased automation and robotics impacting employment might not so much be the direct negative financial effect on the employee class as that it further concentrates power in those that own ( or finance) the robots and produce the goods and services that are consumed by the populace. Most western democracies have already evolved towards a political model which only responds to the demands of the " upper 1%", and in the limit case where the remaining 99% are essentially unemployed and economically powerless, the transition away from "popular democracy" would be complete.

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad "