Year after year in our Salary & Career Report, we ask our readers if they would recommend engineering as a career to the young students of tomorrow. The percentage is always high; last year it was an overwhelming 92%. The majority of our readers find engineering to be a fulfilling profession, with 89% of them feeling satisfied to extremely satisfied with their engineering jobs. I would assume that the main reasons break down into two reasons: the security and the challenges of the profession.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that the engineering profession as a whole will increase in jobs by 3% from 2014 to 2024. The median wage for all of engineering was $77,900, well above the median for all jobs in the economy, which sits at $37,040. If you break out mechanical engineering, which is the No. 1 engineering major and the broadest of engineering disciplines, the BLS estimates an increase of occupational growth by 5% by 2024 and the median salary is listed at $84,190. These numbers reflect our own salary survey. Through our survey, we have recorded an 11.5% in salary from 2014 to 2016 with a median salary of $99,933. A strong case can be made that the engineering profession is secure field to work in, however, it is a changing field especially as the world of the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data become ever increasingly intertwined with engineering.
The world of (IoT) has been a big disruptor for the engineering industry. It has increased the amount of investment into areas like wireless communication, smart devices, sensor equipment, cybersecurity, and computer networks. In our 2016 survey, our readers indicated that 81% of companies were investing into computer security, 36% were using mobile devices for IoT related work (i.e., data collection, system notifications), and another 36% of companies have started to replace older devices with smarter interconnected devices. According to CompTIA’s Cyberstates 2016 report, the in-demand tech engineering roles will live in the world IoT. The top three jobs for 2017 in the world of tech engineering are cybersecurity engineering, virtual reality engineering, and cloud engineering. Several companies are looking for these types of skills to develop their IoT platforms. Companies like Siemens, GE, and Dassault Systemes are promoting digital tools to help pre-plan assemble lines and predict errors that can occur during production. The world of engineering is becoming more and more a computer integrated world. As a result, engineers will be expected to have better understanding of computer sciences and how to incorporate these technology advancements into their workflow and designs.
Siemens Digital Factory helps engineers predict the possible errors that can occur during production and provide design improvements prior to build.
What do you think? Do you think you have an understanding of the engineering future? Click here to respond to our Annual Salary & Career Report survey and tell us what you think.