The engineering unemployment rate

Are there any bright spots in the job market?

It’s been a discouraging time on the career front for many engineers.  The US unemployment rate climbed to 7.6% in January as employers slashed another 598,000 jobs off of U.S. payrolls.  This is the worst job loss since December 1974.  In the last three months approximately 1.8 million jobs have been lost.  Throughout all of 2008, the number was 3.6 million.  These are truly staggering numbers.

January was a brutal month for layoffs and included many engineering-centric companies such as Microsoft, Boeing, and Caterpillar.  Announced layoffs so far this year have already topped 300,000.

So without a doubt, this is a really bad time to be looking for a job.

So are there any bright spots for engineers?  For one thing, the 7.6% statistic really doesn’t tell the whole story.  Unemployment is worst for young people across all ages.  If you look at people over age 25, then the rate is around 6%, which is still pretty ugly.  But if you look for people with four year college degrees, and that’s most engineers, the unemployment rate is around 3.3%.  But this category still needs further segmentation – it includes most people on Wall Street too. 

Note that “green” jobs are on the rise: The number of job postings at TheLadders.com requiring an environmental-planning or engineering background has gone up about 25% over the past year.  Any interest in project management for a wind-farm?  That’s the kind of short term job that recruiters have to fill with an engineer.