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Engineering Shortage Late last week, I attended a Sustainability Summit hosted by the Center of Excellence for Energy Technology at Centralia College in Washington State. The keynote speaker, Dr. Alan Hardcastle from Washington State University Extension Energy Program said that in these bad economic times, many people have put off their retirement. He went on to say that when the economy rebounds, these people plus many others would all retire at the same time leaving a substantial shortage of engineers and technicians. As you may know, there are more baby-boomers retiring than there are students graduating from programs to fill the void. According to Forbes magazine, “For the second year in a row, engineer is the hardest job to fill in America.” The article went on to say that there will be a shortage of engineers because, “First, the federal stimulus program is hastening the rebuilding of America's highways, bridges and tunnels, and the refitting of buildings to be more sustainable, which is making the demand for engineers soar. Also, the demand for new sustainable energy sources such as wind farms is increasing too. Meanwhile, the profession's most experienced workers are retiring in droves. "Companies are looking to replace more than half of their engineers over the next eight years, because baby boomers are retiring," Jacobson says. "When you have 80,000 engineers working for you, as Lockheed Martin does, that's a lot of jobs." He says that even if every single seat in the nation's engineering schools is filled, that's only 75,000 engineers being trained annually. That won't come close to making up the shortage.” This is good news for students and possibly one of the factors that are accounting for the Information Week report that a diverse enrollment in graduate engineering is on the rise. Posted by Celeste Baine on June 29, 2009 Talkback From Celeste Baine - You can pull this data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Posted on June 30, 2009 at 7:31 pm PST From John Hayes - A colleague sent me to this post. Nice job. Do you have any statistics on the number of engineering jobs that are open in America at any given time? Posted on June 29, 2009 at 2:42 pm PST Post your comments to Engineering Shortage |
