In general, the unemployment rate for civil engineers is extremely low, and the new graduate will find a steady demand for her or his services. It will be much more important for that graduate to choose the job most appropriate to her or his desires and capabilities rather than to worry about unemployment. After the young civil engineer has selected a job and has been employed for a time, there are various paths that can be followed to achieve professional advancement. Those paths to career advancement also will be described in this article.
Jobs
In any discussion of employment and career advancement, one of the most important considerations is job stability. In other words, is there likely to be a variable demand for individuals engaged in a particular type of activity so that periods of high salary and many job offers alternate with periods of unemployment? A great deal has been written and spoken about the stability of the job market in engineering since the late 1960s when aerospace engineers were hard pressed to find work and in the 1990s when defense related work slackened, at least temporarily, as governments sought to reduce defense spending after Cold War tensions eased. There has been continuing controversy over whether or not there will be enough engineers to meet projected demands. Because the employment picture does vary with economic conditions, engineering enrollments tend to show some fluctuation. Shortly after World War II, with the return of many servicemen to schools and colleges in the United States, engineering enrollments reached a peak, with more than 80,000 freshmen enrolling in engineering courses in 1946. In the five years from 1946 to 1950, however, freshmen enrollments dropped to approximately 35,000. What caused this rapid and serious decline in the number of freshmen college students choosing engineering as a career?
Shortly after World War II, the federal government released statistical analyses of the engineering profession, including predictions for jobs in the coming years. These predictions included a warning that, with the anticipated enrollments of more students in engineering courses (at the 80,000 per year level), a surplus of engineers soon would be created in the United States. This prediction was given great publicity in newspapers and magazines. As a result, many high school seniors decided to enter other careers, and freshmen enrollments in engineering dropped accordingly. Then, in the early 1950s, with the start of the Korean War and with a corresponding increased need for engineers and technically trained specialists, freshmen enrollments in engineering once again increased. By 1956, freshmen enrollments in engineering again reached the level of about 80,000, equaling the 1946 peak.
During these years, continued emphasis was given to the need for scientists and engineers by the growing competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, particularly in aerospace activities. Again, however, the rapid increase in freshmen enrollments led to predictions that the job market would be flooded with graduate engineers in the early 1960s. As a result of these predictions, freshman engineering enrollments once again declined to a level of about 65,000 in 1962 and 1963.
Of course, these changes in the numbers of college freshmen enrolling in engineering courses were reflected in similar increases and decreases in the number of persons graduating from engineering curricula. For example, the peak enrollment of over 80,000 freshmen in engineering in 1946 yielded more than 50,000 engineering graduates in 1950. The rapid decrease in freshmen enrollments in engineering, with a low of about 35,000 in 1950, produced a corresponding decrease in the number of engineering degrees awarded four years later, with a low of approximately 25,000 bachelor's degrees in engineering being granted in 1954 and 1955.
The mid 1960s saw a significant increase in the number of freshmen enrolling in engineering curricula, primarily as a result of the greatly expanded requirements for engineers in aerospace activities. The federal government produced data that showed that the demand for engineers and scientists in 1965 and 1966 was more than twice as great as the demand in 1960. This demand produced rises in enrollments that, in turn, resulted in a steady increase in the number of engineering graduates from 1965 to 1970.
The economic recession and the decrease in demand for engineers in the late 1960s and the early 1970s were again publicized widely. A large proportion of the engineers and scientists who were suddenly unemployed had been active in the aerospace and defense programs. Some of the most serious cutbacks in the aerospace and defense industries were experienced at the executive level of management and at the senior scientist/engineer level. As a result, many of the newly unemployed engineers were persons with years of experience and advanced degrees, particularly Ph.D.s. The situation of Ph.D. engineers with 15 years experience being suddenly out of work, or employed as janitors and taxi drivers, made excellent material for television news programs, newspapers, and magazine articles. As one would expect, freshmen enrollments in engineering correspondingly dropped to approximately 50,000 in 1973, producing a significant reduction in the number of engineering graduates in the middle 1970s. Since that time, freshmen enrollments have increased, but not so much that a glut of graduates is anticipated in the foreseeable future. However, annual civil engineering enrollments varied by 30 percent in the years 1985 to 1992, from 14,515 to 19,385 in graduate programs. Job prospects of graduates would of course also vary, depending on supply and demand.
