If the young engineers don't get work when they graduate, within a couple years of non eng work the industry will consider them to be non engineers. They won't be available to the labour pool as replacements for the aging ones when they finally retire. The industry screams shortage whenever it can't find the people in their niche with 10 yrs experience that they failed to hire as fresh grads ten yrs ago. So it has been for at least two decades, and it has been getting steadily worse.
A growth rate of 20% in 8 years is barely above the demographic growth rate in the U.S. If it's above the expected growth rate for all occupations, that is because so many of them are in massive decline.
The reality of the situation is, we've been generating more engineers in the U.S. And Canada than the market can use as engineers by a large margin, and in Canada the steady state is 30% of eng grads working as engineers- a lower match rate than any other profession. Not all of the ones who leave the profession or never enter it are CEOs or patent lawyers. On average, they earn 20% less than the ones working as engineers.
If engineering is what you love, and live, then get into a good school preferably with co op and strive to be in the top third or higher in your class. You will be fine. If you're doing well, you'll encourage others to follow the same path, decades later- in ignorance of or perhaps even in spite of the stats- that is what I see engineers do time and again.
If you're vaguely good in math and science and don't know what to pursue in university, my advice is to stay clear of engineering if you think it's in short supply- it absolutely is not. Then again, staying clear of general science would also be good advice. The STEM crisis is a myth, but that doesn't mean all hope is lost. It just means you cannot count on an education automatically guaranteeing the employment it purportedly prepares you for, despite the hype. In Canada, anything related to medicine still has the best match rates between education and employment- upwards of 80-90%. Every other regulated profession puts more of its grads to work in their chosen fields than engineering does. Even teaching, which is oversupplied to miserable levels, manages to employ a fraction of its graduate candidates twice as high as engineering does here- and at a pay level similar to what engineers earn once vacation is accounted for.