On paper at least, the engineering profession is thriving. According to the most recent biannual report on the engineering job market by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), issued in November 1995, the unemployment rate for engineers is, at less than 2 percent, the lowest it's been since the last recession, in 1991. On top of that, more engineers are employed than ever before.

"The effects of the recession finally seem to be behind us," said Dick Ellis, a sociologist who has analyzed the BLS engineering employment data for the American Association of Engineering Societies in Washington, D.C. "Further, in the fall of 1995, the number of people employed in engineering went above 2 million for the first time." That number has since fallen to about 1,935,000 as of the first quarter of 1996, but it's still historically high.

"It's puzzling, too," Ellis added. "More engineers are employed than ever before, but we also know that work is continuing to move offshore, and some of the work performed here is being done by engineers with temporary visas. Thus, demand appears to be sufficient to replace what's moving offshore, absorb additional entrants to the labor market, and still keep engineering unemployment historically low."

"We're seeing a 2- to 4-percent gain in mechanical engineering employment," said Arthur Ebeling, director of the ASME Midwestern Regional Office in Mount Prospect, Ill. "Although the power industry is downsizing again and most of what's available in the automotive industry still is contract work, employment in manufacturing industries is more than holding its own." Other ASME regional-office directorsÑDavid Cook of the Southern Regional Office in Dallas; Carolyn Davis of the Eastern Regional Office in Burke, Va.; and James Reffelt of the Northeast Regional Office in Brewster, N.Y.Ñall report increases in job-bulletin listings and decreases in requests for the bulletins in their regions. "Usually, a decrease suggests that fewer mechanical engineers are seeking work," Carolyn Davis said. "However, the decrease doesn't reflect any requests that come in as Web hits."

"I haven't gotten a request for a job seminar since the last one I gave in October 1995," Lynden Davis said. "That suggests the employment picture overall is good. Companies appear to be creating new jobs, which is being compounded, perhaps, by an increase in the number of engineers looking to change jobs now that times are better." "It looks like a higher percentage of students are getting jobs, too," Reffelt said. "The unemployment picture isn't what it was 10 years ago by any stretch of the imagination, but it's better than it has been in the past five years."

Despite the plethora of positive signs, for too many mechanical engineers today's boom still resembles all too closely the bust of the early 1990s. Plummeting demand for defense products and ongoing re-engineering are just two factors prolonging the wave of corporate downsizings that started during the last recession. Furthermore, even some of the increases in employment reflect contract or temporary work, which in many cases does not provide health and other benefits.

"There still are many unhappy engineers out there," Ellis said. "Although there is much good news in the latest BLS report on engineering employment, I wouldn't be willing to say that all is well. For one thing, the unemployment figures are misleading because they don't include people who are discouraged from looking for work. Further, if an engineer who's been laid off takes a job as a bank teller, he's not counted as an unemployed engineer; he's considered employed. As a result, no one really knows what's happening out there."

Ellis also pointed to the relatively narrow gap between current employment levels and those projected for 2005. According to the BLS's most recent biannual report, there will be 2,315,853 engineers and engineering managers in the United States in 2005, an increase of 503,358 over 1994's 1,812,495. "Considering that we're already just about at the 2 million mark, we don't have too far to grow," he said.

"It's not a very optimistic forecast," Ellis added. "The BLS has been getting more conservative in its estimates for engineering employment."

The BLS may be even more conservative when it publishes its next study in 1997. "Not only is downsizing continuing," Ellis said, but "on top of that, about 1 million engineering graduates are joining the labor force around the world each year. That means that every two years, about as many engineers are added to the world labor market as are employed in total in the United States."

All told, the falling demand for defense products, continued downsizing, increasing globalization, and a rapidly expanding engineering labor market worldwide mean that "as much as times have improved, this still is not a time for engineers to relax," Ellis said.

Small Is Beautiful

"For years, the economic news in the Hudson Valley of New York and New England has been dominated by the downsizing of companies such as IBM and Kodak, and the shutdown of the GM plant in Tarrytown, N.Y.," said Reffelt. "Now, the small and midsize companies are moving into some of the sites abandoned by the big companies, and they're setting the pace for the region's economy."

The rise of small and midsize companies is changing the way engineers find jobs. "In the past, large companies had recruiting programs, and they largely came to you," said Ebeling. "In the case of small and midsize companies, though, you have to go to them."

In the Midwest, about 10 to 20 percent of jobs are advertised in newspapers, and 80 to 90 percent now come through personal contacts, Ebeling said. "The relatively small remainder of jobs come through specialized systems, such as employment agencies."

The rise of small and midsize businesses has also been accompanied by a change in employer expectations of mechanical engineers. "Small and midsize companies want a systems individual," he said. "They don't have teams of engineers, and they don't have specialists. They need one person who has the flexibility to do it allÑall the way from idea to implementation."

"Service firms are looking for generalists with flexibility," Ellis said. "That means an ability to work for any client. If you can combine a knowledge of engineering and business, you become much more interesting to an employer."

"In the past, employers placed a high value on hiring graduates with good grades," said Reffelt. "Now, companies want graduates who can work as a team, have good communications skills, and have project experience.

"That's particularly true for small companies, where there are fewer people and the ability to work with others is so important," he added. "Engineering skills are still criticalÑespecially if you're going into consulting and need to be on an equal footing with specialists employed by your clients. Even then, MEs are expected to be able to quickly grasp their clients' business problems, so generalists still have an edge."

Where the Action Is

"Even the statistics fail to give a complete picture of where mechanical engineers are employed and, thus, where their job prospects may be brightest," Ellis noted. "For example, the approximately 218,000 mechanical engineers counted by the BLS in 1995 include only those whose job titles or job descriptions clearly indicate that they're MEs. That figure doesn't include people who have been trained as mechanical engineers but went into robotics after college, and it doesn't include mechanical engineering managers."

Of the 218,000 mechanical engineers counted in 1995, Ellis said that approximately 134,500 were in manufacturing industries, about 70,000 were in nonmanufacturing industries, and the remaining 13,500 were in government. Industries that employ the most mechanical engineers include general machinery (approximately 32,000), electrical and electronic equipment and precision instruments (about 30,500), and chemicals (around 7,500).

The rise of a new engineering discipline is making it harder to track current employment and future job prospects, Ellis noted. "According to the BLS, by 2005 Ôcomputer engineers' will push ahead of mechanical engineers to be the second-largest engineering specialty," he said. "Many of these computer engineersÑand we don't know how manyÑare actually mechanical engineers, who are working with computer-controlled or sensory equipment or designing, analyzing, and testing electronic packaging."

A Consulting Profession?

"For example, companies involved in wholesale or retail trade are now hiring or engaging the services of mechanical engineers, and this trend should accelerate by 2005," Ellis said. "There, mechanical engineers are working for employers like Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, for example, to develop inventory-on-demand systems that often are a key to their competitiveness."

Other nontraditional industries projected to increase their employment of mechanical engineers include accounting firms that render management-consulting services and health-care providers. Accounting firms increasingly are engaging mechanical engineers to help complete a wide variety of their own engagements, such as those to increase the productivity of a client's manufacturing operation or to set up systems to comply with environmental regulations. Employers in the health-care industry are also engaging mechanical engineers to design and test medical equipment.

"Investment firms are also hiring mechanical engineers," said Reffelt. "Generally, they're hiring MEs for their problem-solving skills. In some cases, they're looking for database and computer skills. And they're looking for traditional skills as wellÑfor example, to help evaluate the technical capabilities and manufacturing capacities of companies in which they'd like to invest."

Despite the growth prospects in new industries, job seekers shouldn't cross traditional employers off their lists. "These industries include pressure vessels and heavy machinery, for instance, and while they're not growing fast, they still represent a market that's large, diverse, and generally holding up well," Ellis said. "Despite downsizing, these industriesÑalthough they may not create huge numbers of new jobsÑwill still need thousands of replacement workers as existing employees retire, so they most definitely should not be written off."

Ellis's observations are shared by and large by the directors of ASME's regional offices. "Computer engineering is particularly hot," said Lynden Davis of the Western Regional Office. "It's gotten to the point that computer companies are raiding each others' engineering departments."

Even some of the traditional mechanical engineering industries are picking up. "TRW, for example, is hiring more mechanical, aerospace, and electrical and electronic engineers," Davis added. "Hughes is hiring, too." One reason, he said, is that countries outside of the United States are deciding that they need their own communications satellites, and as a result, TRW and Hughes now have an order backlog.

Boeing is also hiring again after letting workers go. "It's been said that Boeing sold more aircraft in January 1996 than in all of 1994," Davis noted. After having downsized its work force by 40,000, Boeing has upsized employment by 9,000 so far this year.

In the Midwest, good old-fashioned manufacturing is thriving, which accounts for much of the growth in mechanical engineering employment there. "One of the hottest areas in the Midwest is western Michigan," Ebeling of the Midwestern Office said. "There, the best job prospects are with mom-and-pop machine shops."

"In the South, electronics and high-technology businesses are doing fairly well," said David Cook. "Texas Instruments, a major employer in the electronics industry in the Dallas area, is now expanding its facilities. That may lead to a pick-up in hiring as well."

In the Northeast, booming medical and precision-instruments industries, among others, are hiring engineering-services providers as never before. "As the service providers find themselves stretched to the limit, they're farming out work to other contractors," Reffelt said. That doesn't mean that mechanical engineers who only recently opened consulting practices after having been laid off are winning new business, he cautioned.

"The companies are looking by and large for established consultants," he said. "Thus, it's not necessarily good news for a mechanical engineer who's just lost his job or for a student who's just entering the work force."

On the losing side, almost everyone reported that engineering employment in petroleum and oil- and gas- extraction industries continues to decline. In the Southwest, though, employment has stabilized, according to David Cook.

"Employment at gasoline refineries had moved up after California mandated a new formulation that's 15 percent cleaner," Lynden Davis said. "Over the last three to four years, refiners spent about $2 billion to retool. Following the recent flap over the cost of gas, though, they're postponing upgrade projects, so some engineers in consulting firms serving that area are now looking for work."

"The deregulation of the power industry is making utilities very cautious," Ebeling said, "so employment is trending down there, too."

"Utilities in the South went through a major downsizing wave a few years ago," said Cook. "Although it's not going on at the same rate, it's continuing nonetheless."

While the employment picture looks fairly rosy, at least right now, many mechanical engineers are justifiably concerned about the profession's long-term prospects. For one thing, engineering departments have only just begun to benefit from automation.
"What used to be standard entry-level engineering workÑdraftingÑis now being done largely by computer-aided design programs," Ellis said. "The technology is spreading everywhere. As a result, productivity gains are affecting engineers across the board. One master engineer today is capable of accomplishing as much as an entire engineering team once could."

Furthermore, it's becoming clear that productivity- driven re-engineering efforts are here to stay. One reason is that most companies have yet to fully adjust to the changes brought about by the explosive growth in the use of engineering software. Not only are fewer engineers typically needed to take a project from idea to implementation but, as ever-higher levels of productivity are achieved in design, analysis, testing, and manufacturing departments, engineering managers are also recognizing an opportunity to re-engineer the product-development process to cut costs and reduce time to market. In many cases, they're reconsidering who performs which functions at which points in the product life cycle.

Moreover, as the industries created in the wake of the industrial revolution continue to automate, some observers fear that manufacturingÑand the engineers who serve in manufacturing industriesÑwill follow in the footsteps of agricultural workers in the 19th century. "Throughout the history of engineering, something new has always come along to take up the slack created as established industries achieved higher levels of productivity," Ellis said. "We're now at a point where we need a new technology to come up, change the landscape completely, and create lots of new technical jobs."

There are indications that mechanical engineers are rising to the challenge. "Our most recent job-training seminars have been very well attended, even though the employment picture has begun to brighten," said Carolyn Davis of the Eastern Regional Office. "From this evidence, I wouldn't necessarily conclude that mechanical engineers are worried about unemployment. Rather, to me it says that they're becoming much more actively involved in the employment process."

"ASME is working with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers to create an entrepreneurial network in the Northeast for engineers who'd like to start their own businesses," said Reffelt. "Engineers are now meeting monthly with venture capitalists, and the effort has begun to gather steam."

Although there are plenty of promising signs, reason for caution remains. The Commerce Department has estimated that nanotechnology won't be commercially viable until at least the turn of the century, and some of the emerging industriesÑsuch as telecommunicationsÑare either shedding workers or hiring only a relative handful.

Then there's the question of expectations in an increasingly winner-take-all society. "To survive today, mechanical engineers are being told that they have to already possess knowledge of a specialty and to be learning the next one, they're expected to learn a foreign language, and they have to understand business," Ellis said. "In short, they're expected to be stars. The problem is, we can't all be stars, and even the stars can't win all the time."

Of course, many mechanical engineers didn't go into the profession to be stars. Rather, they joined to serve humankind by fast-forwarding the technological progress of the species as a whole. "In this environment, though, you don't get rewarded just for your ability to advance technology," Ellis added. "It's not just that you have to understand business; very often, you also have to learn to play company politics to keep your job, and that's been perhaps the hardest thing for engineers to accept."

Of course, with all of the opportunities in nanotechnology, biotechnology, and other emerging technologies, mechanical engineers have potentially limitless chances to serve humankind. The hard part will be ensuring that necessary and painful changes to the engineering employment picture don't rob the profession of its soul.

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© 1996 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers