More than one in 10 advertised jobs in the U.S. are in the engineering sector, and salaries are 72 percent more than the average, according to a new report.
FORT WORTH, Texas—Businesses across the United States, especially those in the manufacturing sector, are facing a long-term battle to recruit engineering talent as demand continues to far exceed supply.
According to a new report by RS, a global provider of products and services for industrial customers, this talent deficit could stunt the growth of key industries, costing the U.S. economy trillions of dollars in the next decade.
The company’s research identified that there are currently 5.38 million people working in the U.S. engineering sector, and the number of employees has been growing by around 3.5 percent year-on-year. Despite this rising workforce, nearly a million (966,000) engineering roles were advertised across the country in August. This equates to approximately 13 percent of all available, advertised roles (7.7 million) across the U.S., placing engineering among the top 10 most in-demand professions, the company said in a release summarizing its report.
With about141,000 engineering graduates in the U.S. each year, the data suggests that a maximum of 15 percent of “open” roles could be filled by new talent per year. This leaves an employee deficit of 85 percent (825,000 employees) that doesn’t even account for people retiring, the company said.
Software developers are said to represent the largest part of the current engineering workforce (around 9 percent), followed by civil engineers (6 percent). However, electrical engineers are the most in-demand in 2024. Although there are currently about 161,000 electrical engineers employed in the United States, there are a further 148,000 advertised roles available for these professionals, equating to 15 percent of all “open” engineering positions.
Mechanical engineers (84,683) and manufacturing engineers (76,400) are also highly sought after, accounting for 9 percent and 8 percent of advertised engineering roles, respectively. Graduates with majors in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering are higher in volume than other specialties, representing 25 percent and 21 percent of all engineering graduates in the last year. However, the volume of new talent coming through is less than a quarter of those sought by businesses, the company said.
“Salaries have been raised to help businesses lure the experts they need, but this isn’t necessarily attracting more people into the industry overall. Instead, it is understood to be largely leading to the reallocation of existing employees,” the release stated.
The average advertised wage for engineering workers is currently around $103,000 per year, or about 72 percent higher than the U.S. average ($60,000). Engineers have seen wage increases of around 8 percent in the last year alone, according to RS.
The company said that southeastern San Mateo County (California) currently offers the highest engineering salaries at $283,000, followed by southeast Westchester County (New York) at $269,000 and then southwest Santa Clara County (California) at $265,000.
While electrical engineers are the most in-demand, they can’t currently demand the highest salary. Advertised roles for this field are around $103,000 per year, while healthcare systems engineers are reported to attract the highest average salaries of $130,000 per year.
Attracting more women into engineering was identified as an ongoing key area to support the sector’s growth. Currently, only around a quarter of the U.S. engineering workforce is female, and the same applies to university graduates. Although the percentage of female engineering students has been increasing steadily since the 1950s (when it was just 0.3 percent), the numbers remain comparatively low compared to male graduate rates, the company said.
Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and Northeastern University in Boston are reported to currently have the highest percentage of female engineering students (34 percent) in the United States.
“Our clients in the industrial manufacturing, automation, and electronics sectors are reporting resource shortages to us in two key places,” said RS Director of Technical Solutions Jim Davis, in the release. “The first is general staff shortages, with the impact of limited employee resources being that some customers are struggling to complete all their projects within expected timeframes. The second is skill shortages. Our customers are reporting that they simply don’t have the skillsets required to complete certain projects.”
“While there is no overnight solution for these challenges, we’ve encouraged our clients to seek out opportunities to advance their manufacturing and engineering processes to help ease their resourcing pressure points. The growth of digital factories creates potential to both improve processes and to broaden the range of skills required from the industrial sector workforce.”
More information about the report is available here: