Fewer Engineers/More Work 28

[metengr]

Has anybody heard or have read stats on the number of engineering graduates per year, and trends?

I was talking with my friends kid the other day about the engineering profession (20 years for me). I know that the job market is highly dependant on location. However, in my discussions with him, it seemed like fewer students are entering engineering schools after the computer dot.com bubble blew up. Does it seem like most college students want to make easy money the easy way versus working as engineers?

If this is the case, I would expect a critical shortage of engineers in the next 5 to 10 years.

 

[davefitz]

Are you kidding?

There are tens of thousands of engineers cranked out of the colleges in Asia each year, most of which are more than happy to ship out to western countries if they can get a Visa. If there is any "shortage" in the western countries, it is a simple matter to bump up the Visa quota and backpedal on all this background security check stuff. The backup plan is to outsource- which may actually become the primary game plan.

 

[Lorentz]

Hi metengr,

No need to worry about a shortage, just check out the thread:

Engineering is Going Overseas - Goodbye Jobs
thread730-63828

It's ironic you should start this thread just 1 day after the 1st anniversary of dannym's thread. I think he summed up the situation completely when he wrote:

One of the threads in this forum concerns itself with encouraging women to go into engineering. If you care about the person, be honest with them (and yourself). Engineering as a career for a large number of people is over. A bright young person would be smarter to pursue another profession.

I see that you are a materials engineer. Perhaps you can provide some help to MetalMan14 who graduated in this field in Dec. 2002, but (as far as I know) has not been able to find a job. You can read about his experiences in the thread:

Is there any hope for us entry level engineers?
thread730-83140

There are several threads in this forum that confirm the widely held opinion that predicitions of "shortages" of engineers and scientists are completely unfounded.

 

[CRG]

want to make easy money the easy way versus working as engineers?

Gee, I thought that engineering was an easy way to earn money. It is much easier being a desk jockey verses doing manual labor. Also, in many plants, engineers get the best doughnuts because they can find a way to be where the doughnuts are when they get there. And lastly, how many other workers can spend there time on the web in forums like this and keep their jobs?

CRG

 

[Beggar]

I want to make easy money the easy way!![\b]

My only problem is that I don't know what way that is. If you know, Dave, please share. I'd be happy to pay you a percentage finder's fee or something.

 

[Beggar]

Oops, accidently click "submit" instead of "preview".

My old DOS habits (& continued habit of keyboard navigation over clicking) make me always type the backslash instead of the slash.

 

[moltenmetal]

If you want to see the stats for Canada (not just Ontario, but the whole country), have a look at

http://www.geocities.com/martinsmoltenmetal/index.htm

. The data sources are given under the graph and have been verified. There's no shortage of engineers here- in fact there's been a three-fold increase in the number of engineers entering the workforce on a yearly basis in a single decade- a decade in which Canada's job force and economy have grown less than 20%. Input minus output equals accumulation- no shortage now, nor in the forseeable future. Even the retirement of the baby boomers in ten+ years won't make a dent in the accumulated glut in supply IMHO.

And the simple unemployment stats for engineers don't give an accurate picture. Engineers generally find something to do to make money. The tragedy is when it happens to be something other than engineering out of necessity rather than choice. That's called "under-employment", and it's the bane of our profession in Canada. Under-employment levels are staggering.

In Ontario, the stats from the Council of Ontario Universities show that an engineer who graduated in 2001 was significantly more likely to be out of work two years after graduation than the AVERAGE university graduate- that means the average of all of them, including those stellar job-magnet programs like fine arts and journalism.

This "shortage of engineers" crap is propagated primarily by people and industries who thrive on having access to cheap, "flexible" engineering labour. They want us to be a commodity, not a profession. And we're essentially silent in response. In fact, we attract more young people to our profession in a vain attempt to boost public awareness of how essential our profession is to the economy and public well-being. Instead it increases supply and makes our lot worse- and theirs too.

 

[davefitz]

moltenmetal:
If there are too many engineers in canda, how come there was such an inflation in engineering costs for the expansion of the tar sands in Fort McMurray area? The companies involved blamed most of the overruns to insufficient availability of engineers in that industry.

 

[metengr]

You know what is most interesting about this forum is all of the diverse opinions. Verrrrrry informative.

BOTTOM LINE:
Engineers with the necessary "marketable" skill sets that can remain flexible in terms of location, and can plan ahead, will continue to be employed. Others can complain about it.

Hey, CRG, lets have a donut with our coffee!

 

[corus]

The problem isn't a shortage of engineers but a shortage of good engineers. Employers complain that engineers entering the job market are generally of a low academic standard. Those from Asia tend to have a higher standard than the West.

corus

 

[pmkPE]

College is BIG Business! Who do you think, along with the help of our engineering societies, (which happen to have a disproportionate number of professors on board) continues to tell potential students that there is a shortage of engineers? Why do you think they tell them this? They face the same dilema that software companys face: better students/better software require less (additional)course work/less upgrades which equals a diminshing income. So, weaken the accademic program (reduce the qualifications for entry)/let your clients debug your software, tell your future students that they will need to take additional classes in underwater basket weaving for their societal development skills/or tell your clients that the next round of software upgrades will have debugged the problems we identified ( but the new bells and whistles will require us to debug again).

Twenty years ago it would have taken a staff off 10 or more to survey, design, and draft one mile of road way and do it in approximately 9 months. Now we can do it with 3-5 and some very powerful and relatively low priced civil engineering software, in as little time as 5-6 months. (For <$15,000 we can and have purchased a full set of civil software for surveying, hydrology, watershed management, road design, storm and sanitary sewers, and more) this is much less than your basic engineering graduate salary for one year, the same for a registered surveyor or a civil tech with an associates degree!)

With all of the engineers and firms out there, how do we stay in business? The public in general expects mass production not only from the goods they buy off the store shelf but also in the services they obtain. When you go to your doctor do you think that s/he is inferior to all other doctors offering the same service? I hope not. (Also do you negotiate with them over their prices?) In the medical schools they limit the number of students that can enroll each year! What do engineering schools do? They lower their requirements and add on. They add on buildings and they add on liberal arts classes to the undergraduate degree programs and they move, in my opinion, the core classes up to the graduate level. Look at the costs of college over the last 10 or more years, inflation for the country as a whole has been steady around 2-3%, but the costs of college has increased at least 7%. Free enterprise for the majority of society results in lower costs through supply and demand. So how do we stay in business. Aggressive marketing and educating our potential clients of the quality of our services is one way - with out work we go out of business; also we have to cut costs. We buy software that allows one person to do what it used to take several. We can then move into smaller, lower costing facilities; some of us work from home with even lower overhead which is then passed on to the clients; since all engineers are the same, one just costs more than the other.

Don't get me wrong I throughly enjoy my work and currently would not want to change careers. But I do not recommend engineering to anyone, unless that is what they want to do. It has its rewards other than monetary, such as knowing that I contribute to the health, safety and welfare of society; it is challenging as well as positive work (- we are part of building rather than part of leaching or destruction).

Its time for me to get off my soap box.

 

[Lorentz]

A star for you pmkPE for telling it like it is!

If a young person were to ask me if they should consider a career in engineering, I would not ask them how good were their grades in math and science, since most of the working engineers I know came from the middle of their classes (not the top). Instead I would ask them the following three questions:

1. Do you know a successful engineer who is willing to mentor you after you graduate? If the answer is no, that's strike one.

2. Do you know any working engineers, or at least technicians or tradespeople who can tell you the type of working conditions you will encounter if you are able to land a job upon graduation? If no, strike two.

3. Does the university you are planning to attend have a co-op program to give students practical work experience? If no strike three. Best take a look at some other career.

I'm not saying someone who has three strikes definitely will fail to find happiness in the world of engineering. But the chances are slim, and the road will likely be rocky.

 

[rbcoulter]

Lorentz's has some good advice.

Other advice for those considering engineering as a career:

1. Think about the company and industry that would employ you. Do they have a future? Will they be decimated by foreign competition? Is the culture of the business a place where you can fit in?

2. Consider that engineering may only be a short term stint and that real advancement will only come when you move into management etc. which may not involve much engineering at all.

3. Engineering is a mobile profession. If you don't want to relocate, consider another career.

 

[Tobalcane]

Well this is from the Department of Labor (

http://stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos033.htm)

here in the USA. For mechanical engineers, it is bleak.

“Employment of mechanical engineers is projected to grow more slowly than the average for all occupations through 2012.”


Go Mechanical Engineering
Tobalcane

 

[Tobalcane]

It looks the same for the Material guys too...

http://stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos034.htm

"Employment of materials engineers is expected to grow more slowly than the average for all occupations through 2012. "

Even if there was a slow down of new grads in engineering, does it matter? Our industrie is not looking good.

Go Mechanical Engineering
Tobalcane

 

[QCE]

Dannym wrote in another thread:

To address your comment on the "engineering shortage". The "shortage" is invented by colleges to keep the seats filled and management to keep the supply high and salaries low.

The following is a quote from an article I've read:
"The engineering shortage crisis is a myth promoted by greedy corporations seeking relaxed rules for imported labor and universities seeking lucrative government grants."

I would have to agree with Dannym's point as everyone that I keep in touch with from university is employed and has many job options open to them. Some people do lose their jobs for a short period but are right back to work within a couple of monthes.

 

[davefitz]

There is no doubt that in some industries, the management is convinced that they can obtain a more productive engineering force from overseas. It is my guess that in order to convince legislators to approve an incrrese in visa quotas, they must provide published refernces where the article claims a shortage of engineers. So, it is not as simple as mereley supporting a candidate financially, it is also neccesary to convince a journal to publish an article that claims a shortage exists ( and it usually only takes paying for a few full page ads to bring the editor around to your way of thinking)

 

[moltenmetal]

davefitz:

High engineering costs? There's enough competition amongst the engineering firms in Canada that I doubt the assertion is correct. Sounds like an excuse rather than an explanation.

One of my colleagues couldn't find a job in Ontario so that's where he ended up. Ontario's a big place, with over 1/3 of Canada's entire population, and he couldn't find a job here worth taking.

Most people who go to remote locations like those of the tarsands projects are there for a max of three years to make money, then they come back to civilization for the lifestyle (i.e. because if they stay any longer, their spouse will leave them!). That is, if the boom in that business actually lasts the full three years...Roughly every decade, investment in that area dries up- it's a boom/bust business, currently booming. And they're not taking huge numbers of new grads and mentoring them, because they know they won't stay- they want people with 10+ years of Canadian experience. Anecdotal reports of localized, short-term shortages always hit the media. Nobody bothers to look at the overall situation.

The (current) tar sands project option is great for the chem engs and mech engs with process experience. But consider this: what's the toughest engineering program to get into as a high-school student? The one requiring the highest marks? Electrical/computer engineering. What was the percentage of electrical engineering grads in 2001 in Ontario who were unemployed in 2003? 10% - a rate over 20% higher than the OVERALL unemployment rate for all Canadians, educated or not. Hardly smacks of a shortage...And which area has had its enrollment increased by 30% in the last 5 years in Ontario? You guessed it...

Business wants a cheap, "flexible" (i.e. cowed), plentiful and well-trained labour force, because that's good for business. Paying premium salaries to get the skilled people you need is not good for business if there's an alternative to get the same skills cheaper. Hence business will ALWAYS lobby to increase supply. They play up every anecdotal, localized shortage and make a media story out of it. Universities depend on growing enrollment for economies of scale, so they're all about increasing supply too. And politicians go along for the ride.

The other professions in Canada, for the most part, have a handle on this. When someone wants to increase supply beyond demand, they lean back. We engineers have to wake up and smell the cat food, and do something about this oversupply situation before we're reduced to a commodity rather than a profession- if it isn't too late already.

Yes, there will always be a job for the top 10% of our profession or any profession. But that's no reason to promote the profession to young people as a good career choice. As far as I'm concerned, if a kid has demonstrated a love for engineering by actually DOING some when they're in high school, has good academic standing in the subjects that count and can get into a co-op university, they're probably going to do fine. If they've got a choice of professions open to them and no strong love for the subject of engineering, I encourage them to explore other options. The reward to risk and effort ratio in so many other fields of endeavour is far higher than the current situation and forseeable future in engineering, that I'd be doing them a disservice not to point that out.

 

[QCE]

Many good points molten,

Someone that goes into a profession just for money will hardly ever do well.

Do you really need higher marks to get into electrical engineering than other type of engineering? You sure didn't a couple of years ago.

I would agree with you that probably about 90% of grads are employed within a year but where did you get the stats from?

 

[moltenmetal]

http://www.cou.on.ca/publications/2003 Graduate Survey.pdf

is where I got the stat from. And it says that 10% of elec/comp engs were unemployed TWO years after graduation. And that doesn't mean that the 90% had jobs in their field- many, many of them took a job, any job, in any field, to get started on paying back their student loans. Under-employment is ALWAYS missing from employment stats. Any job = off the unemployment or welfare roll, so that means "good", doesn't it? If you're a politician it does...

For contrast, look at ANY profession in that study associated with ANY aspect of medicine- even veternary medicine, or degreed dieticians- and you'll see employment stats after two years of 99-100%. Hell, even religious studies students had higher employment stats than engineers! Near 100% employment for engineers once was the situation for engineers in Canada, and isn't now for one simple reason: oversupply relative to demand. It has repercussions too- in terms of lousy compensation levels and working conditions for engineers.

Elec/comp eng has had higher admission standards than the other disciplines for years at most of the Ontario universities. The reason? Competition amongst applicants due to perceived demand (i.e. rather than real demand).

Getting into a profession just for the money isn't a good idea. But everyone who gets into a profession SHOULD be able to command compensation befitting their education, skill, experience and the personal/professional risk they take as part of the job. If they can't, we're wasting scarce societal resources by providing too many people with such a specialized, costly education. And by profession I mean a regulated, licensed profession like engineering, law, medicine, chartered accounting etc- not the general use of the word "profession" to mean something someone does for money rather than love (i.e. professional as opposed to amateur).