Engineers: Greater Demand and Faster Recovery

Engineers have always had a good chance at finding work. Any company that does manufacturing, R&D, or even hardware testing needs a few engineers around. That’s one reason why they’ve recovered nicely since the recession:

Engineers (as measured by SOC 17-2000) have grown by 3.7% since 2009, adding 55,510 new jobs (after a 5.8% drop from 2008-2009). If we were to consider all 3-digit SOCs, engineers rank 22nd for growth out 96 groups of workers. It’s probably not a big surprise that California and Texas are home to the largest number of engineers (367,298 jobs between the two of them). Michigan is third with 80,589, and we’ll look more at this key state later in this post.

Of the 18 engineering occupations contained in SOC 17-2000, civil engineers lead the pack in sheer number of jobs. Following are mechanical engineers and industrial engineers, with 239,042 and 216,243 jobs respectively. (Click to enlarge.)

At the bottom of the list are mining and geological engineers (8,898 jobs), marine engineers and naval architects (7,260), and agricultural engineers (4,152). All three of these are pretty specialized careers, which may account for their skinny numbers, but they have healthy growth in spite of that. Mining and geological engineers have grown 10% since 2009, and if we measure from 2002 to the present, the occupation has increased 41%, with only a slight decline in 2008.

As for marine engineers and naval architects, it may have increased less than 1% in the last three years, but the occupation is still doing just fine. Rather than causing devastation, the recession actually calmed things down for marine engineers. Robert Allan, in an interview for The Maritime Executive, put it this way: “What the recession brought was a bit of normalcy to our business in that we weren’t all having to put in 35 to 40 percent overtime.” As the Executive Chairman of Robert Allan Ltd. in Vancouver, B.C., Allan is looking forward to hiring new workers and building his company at a more relaxed rate.

And finally, agriculture engineers decreased 2% from 2009-2011, but the slump has reversed itself in the last year.

But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s the data:

Civil engineers has an estimated 269,010 jobs, the highest of the 18 engineering occupations. Over the last 10 years, civil engineering jobs have increased 11%, which includes a 5% drop during the recession. Most of these engineers are in California, but as it turns out, Alaska, of all places, has the highest concentration at 2.14 — more than twice the national average. There must be a lot of construction going on in the Last Frontier.

Not surprisingly, the occupation with the highest percent change is petroleum engineers (21% since 2009). This occupation has grown 76% in the last 10 years, with hardly even a slouch during the recession. Petroleum engineers also get paid a median hourly wage of $52.92, the highest wages of all engineers.

Here’s a screencap from Analyst detailing the data on petroleum engineers. (Click to enlarge.)

Michigan: A Closer Look

We previously mentioned that Michigan has 80,589 engineering jobs. What is important to note is that the state has the most engineers per capita (location quotient of 1.75). Here’s the data for the 18 engineering occupations in the state of Michigan, arranged by percent change since 2009:

Biomedical engineers comes in first at 25%, then petroleum engineers (24%), aerospace engineers (18%), and materials engineers (14%). But these categories aren’t necessarily the most compelling for the Michigan economy. According to this article from Bloomberg.com, Michigan’s auto industry is desperate for engineers. Andrew Watt, president of iTalent LLC in Troy, says: “There’s an extreme shortage. There’s way more demand than supply.” From the article:

Michigan has had the fastest-improving economy in the U.S., after energy-rich North Dakota, from the third quarter of 2009 through the first quarter of this year, according to the Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States, which tabulates economic recovery from employment and home values to performance of public companies.

If we look at automobile and light duty motor vehicle manufacturing (NAICS 33611), we see that in the last 10 years, the industry has declined almost 52%. But it’s on an upswing right now, with 12% growth since 2009. Industrial engineers accounts for a slim fraction (5%) of this industry, and mechanical engineers is even lower (3.8%). But compared to the other engineering occupations in Michigan, the pool of mechanical engineers is huge. In spite of the struggling economy, Michigan still employs 11% of the nation’s mechanical engineers.

Also note the automobile manufacturing industry’s job multiplier in Michigan is 5.75, which means that for every 100 new jobs in the industry, another 475 new jobs will be created in other industries across the state (read more about that here). This is essentially why auto manufacturing is such a huge deal for the Michigan economy.

Conclusion

Like everyone else, engineers suffered during the recession, but they seem to be recovering faster than many other occupations. One of the main reasons for their recovery is that engineers are always called in at the start of any sort of manufacturing process. Before a product reaches the assembly line, it must be designed, constructed, and tested, and these are engineering skills. And especially since Michigan’s limping automobile industry is starting to produce again, engineers are the new hot.

Data and analysis from this report came from Analyst, EMSI’s web-based labor market tool. Please contact Rob Sentz ([email protected]) if you have questions or comments. Follow us @desktopecon.