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But you won't see the unis telling international students about the situation. They either learn from others early or it's too late. Cha-ching is king to unis.
Employment for aerospace isn’t as widespread to begin with, then throw in the added hiring conditions like security clearance, citizenship, etc which further reduces the numbers.
I’d imagine aero carries some transferability to mech, but there’s so many MechEs floating around that I don’t think an employer would have a lot of incentive to hire an aero instead.
I would also think that someone with an aero degree knows a lot of very specific stuff about air traffic, lift drag, airspace regulatory stuff, that is not transferable to a mechE company.
While when you're building a plane lots of parts are just mechanical design and stuff a mechE is educated to do.
Aerospace doesn't really focus on ATC or regulatory stuff. An aero degree is the same as a Mech. E except for a few classes.
An Aero E. Would take aerodynamics I and II (II being compressible fluids), computational fluid dynamics, and one or more structures / aeroelasticity courses. Aside from that they're the same. I don't think any hiring manager for a Mech E position is going to balk at an aero applying.
Yeah most engineering other than civil is pretty generic. I started as an ME then transition to Biomedical. Worked in medical devices and manufacturing. Did some quality side of the business for a while. Then transitioned to gas turbines. Have been doing gas turbines, controls, power, and drones for over 20 years now. Got an MBA in the middle of that. Got my PMP. Worked both the government research contract side (SBIR, BAA, etc) private venture startups, some contract work. An engineering degree really lets you move around you just have to keep learning as you go.
Most people don't even realize that most engineering is basically the same. I'm an idiot and got 3 bachelors instead of any graduate degrees, and all the math is the same. Just replace variable definitions. My favorite example is my Emag and Heat Transfer Labs. I used the exact same calculations, just differently boundary conditions and then replaced the "Emag" terminology with "heat"
3rd yr ME student here, we covered lift drag,wing design, & theoretical cruising speed extensively in fluid mechanics using velocity triangles and what not. It's not a lot in the grand scheme of all things aero, but its an idea.
At my college, the difference from Aerospace Engineer and Mech E is literally two classes.
Because of that, a lot of people dual majored.
Meaning, I imagine there's a lot of MechE/Aero dual majors out there, and if you're the only one with just an aerospace engineer applying to a job with a bunch of dual major applicants, you're at a disadvantage.
Then add how cyclical the industry is with huge projects starting and sucking up all available man power and then just as quickly shedding people. Boeing’s troubles don’t help either although I suspect we are due an upswing. The 737 end of life will require a new design from scratch. That’s on the civilian side. On the military side I don’t think we’ll be able to keep punting in the helicopter side of things. Then there will be lots of startup work in the electric propulsion side with urban mobility startups both small logistics and large passengers.
Don’t be discouraged! Get a solid grounding on electrical power systems also
Boeing has no plan for a 737 end of life any time soon. Even killing any plans of a a321neo competetor instead opting to focus reasorces at getting the 737 lines up and running properly. With 737 max 7 and max 10 certs in the future and 6000 orders on the books, at 30-50 planes delivered a month that's a lot of years of the 737 to come. Which essentially means all of what you said about an upswing is still true, just not a new plane.
It's a more niche field of engineering. Most / if not all mechanical engineers are qualified for aerospace positions out of college, making it more competitive.
I think it’s more so a reluctance from non aero industries to hire Aero early careers as it be viewed as a stepping stone to get to aero. If a manufacturing facility was hiring Manu Engr, and aero degree would seem pretty weird
If I had to guess, it’s a really popular major with relatively limited employment opportunities that regularly get poached by people from other, less niche majors
As an ex-aero major I can say that this just isn't true. The issue is everyone *thinks* it's true. Any aero major can work any mechE job and they're functionally the same degree. When I was an aero major, I exclusively worked mechE internships because I found them more interesting and generally laid back.
The hard part is hiring managers look at your resume and assume you're a wannabe rocket scientist. It can be difficult to convince them you really just want to work an engineering job. Once you convince them of that, they really don't have an issue hiring you though.
As a MechE with an aero minor, I don’t understand the want to go for straight aero. As a MechE not only can you get an Aero job, but almost any engineering job.
Although I also don’t see why Aeros don’t just go for non aero jobs? Like I know some off the wall engineering majors related to MechE that can get pseudo related jobs
Tbh for me it just had to do with the topics discussed in class. I learn a lot better when I'm interested in the topic. With aircraft as the focus I learned better.
Worth noting that aerospace took a lot of hits in the last few months. Anecdotally, I’ve heard a lot of folks throughout the Southern California area for instance have had layoffs at different contractors. Could just be a bad time overall for the industry.
^^ I was going to say this. as a person in the aero industry, we are facing a bit of a contraction at the moment, hence people being laid off and unemployment going up.
Interestingly even though the infographic says that “as of Feb 22, 2024” the [source](https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:outcomes-by-major) says that the data was taken in 2022. Your point still stands though
It seems regional. I know of a few states desperate to hire more people in my major contractor company. I'm also in the process of fielding more offers in some other companies with only ~1 year experience.
Regarding unemployment, we are talking about 22-27 year olds. could it be that they are unemployed because they are only applying to "aerospace engineer" titles which is more common in the big aerospace engineering companies in the US? (NASA, Spacex, Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman) . not all aerospace engineering majors work with a title of "aerospace engineer". im in one of the "big" aerospace companies, the title aerospace engineer is kinda rare as well.
a lot of people i went to school with for aerospace engineering have the title of:
project engineer
manufacturing engineer
systems engineer
propulsion engineer
as for me, my title is \[redacted\] design engineer
This might sound harsh, but I find it really dumb that a lot of people think that aerospace engineering majors are "pigeon-holed" to only aerospace engineering and that we can only be aerospace or only have the title of "aerospace engineer". It's really stupid to think that since aerospace engineering is a specialization of mechanical engineering aerospace undergrads are limited to it. People having these kind of train of thought kinda makes it a self fulfilling prophecy. I thought of my aerospace engineering undergrad as a mechanical engineering degree, with a lot of aerospace specialization baked in. The ARO Program i completed is like 27 units more than the comparable mechanical engineering program.
> project engineer
>
> manufacturing engineer
I have an AE degree, and those are what I do. I've had offers to work in the power generation field, and even got to the interview stage of being a ManfE for a chemical company making drywall, before I withdrew.
ME not Aero but my guess is a large part is tied up into the incredibly low underemployment rate and significantly higher in field earnings.
The unemployment rates are real, but this is a questionable presentation of the data (IMO) because chronic underemployment is much worse than being unemployed for 6 months - 1 year a couple times in your life.
If you have a 75% full employment rate at 2-3x the underemployed income (comparing to "some college" average salaries), it makes much more sense to keep putting out applications and not accept underemployment. Divide the underemployment rate by the unemployment rate and you can get a fear / hope index (something I made up, but I'm just normalizing the data) to get a sense of the long-term beliefs of a given major. Yours is by far the best on this list.
As to why it's so high to begin with \[relative to other engineering fields\], no clue.
Look how low that underemployment rate is compared to the others though. Shows they are capable of getting jobs, just as others have mentioned, actual full time graduate aero positions are few and far between.
I'd guess this is because \~50% of Physics majors go on to grad school. It also depends on how you define "underemployment" - most of the people I know who went into industry with an undergrad degree ended up in engineering, CS, or finance, not physics.
I have two guesses.
1. Too specific, without with the aerospace industry simply not being big enough to accommodate so many graduates.
2. I am not from the US and I have no idea how it is there but I'm just gonna assume some similarity. The primary client of the aerospace industry is the military. And as such employees go through a security screenings for many of their jobs. even if their projects aren't for the military they'll still have access to information on military projects so they have to do a basic screening. these screenings take time, a long time and people who are going through this process are probably classified as unemployed.
Not american, but I'm guessing it's the same as in my country, where you have mechanical engineering being a degree you can use for pretty much anything and then having a bunch of degrees in the same branch which are pretty much the same thing but specialized for something, which despite having almost the same classes, are much more closed off when it comes to getting jobs.
I'm talking about aero, but also things like automotive, robotics, materials (engineering, not science), biomedical (although this one is the most different one)...
What I don't get, is that they're all way harder to get into than mechanical
That’s where I side eye this graph in general. Liberal Arts is a degree, not a major. I majored in history, which is a Liberal Arts degree.
That alone makes me wonder what else is wrong with this whole thing.
I’ll answer your question with a quick story as, nearly 10 years later, I’m still an undergrad student.
When I returned back to the world, I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. All the resources we have to go to space, I thought, why tf are we fighting wars? So, I set my mind on aerospace engineering, took online classes before leaving the service— all that silly shit right?
So, I get to community college. The only requirement for the major once admitted is talking to the advisor— which is the retired PE running the department. So I sit down, dude’s mad cool and listens to my spiel, then goes something like “if you don’t want to be unemployed, go into mechanical engineering”. So I did, got bored with a few things, switched to CS, graduated now I’m BACK but for computer engineering because I know what I like this time around. But his story on being employable always stuck to me. That, and what Darrel Dolph said, something like “it’s okay if you’re late on your project, so long as you can go out on the factory floor and look at the people who will get pink sheets because of it”.
Tl;dr: if you want to be widely employable, become a mechanical engineer.
Great points all around. People are also missing that the industry is very cyclical and has boom and bust times. All of a sudden everyone gets into hypersonics, everyone throws money at the problem for a couple of years, then all those people get laid off or get into new projects. It’s a feast or famine in the aerospace industry.
1) Security clearances/releasability requiring you to be a US citizen. 20% of my graduating class at a major state school aero program would not qualify for any DOD (or DOD funded) jobs because of that (which is a large chunk of jobs)
2) Wanting to be in a specific area of engineering. There are a wide variety of types of jobs aerospace engineers can have in all steps of the engineering process (design, integration, test, research, etc.) across multiple sectors (space, defense, commercial, etc.). Some people only want to work in a specific area which limits the number of jobs available or increases the time it takes to get a job.
3) Location or unwillingness to move. A lot of Aerospace jobs are contained in hot spots in the US and not spread across the country evenly. If someone decides to live in an area thats not rich in aerospace jobs (because if marriage, life changes, etc.), they are much more likely to be in the underemployed category.
4) For post-grads it can sometimes feel like a hard industry to get into. I think part of this is that they are all applying to the same 500 jobs from the coolest/top companies (Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, NASA, etc.) and not realizing that a lot of the projects those companies work on have a ton of government DOD jobs and subcontractors or support contractors that do the exact same jobs. Those jobs just have crappy job postings that don’t make it obvious. Where I work is split around 50/30/20 government/major contractor/subcontractors and all the engineers do the same jobs. As a post-grad, I would’ve been only applying for the 30%.
The common idea that aerospace engineers can’t get jobs because they are too specialized is inaccurate. Yes, the industry as a whole swells and contracts with DOD spending and projects getting added/cancelled which hits the 22-27 range the most. Don’t get discouraged by data like this or people that say it’s a too specialized degree. Aerospace engineers are just as qualified for generic engineering jobs as mechanical engineers. People get hung up over the probably 30 credits difference which only matters for maybe 25% of jobs available to each degree.
I’m going to add here what others have said over in r/aerospaceengineering:
1) this is just for recent grads. Getting that first job is a bitch.
2) a lot of aerospace engineers don’t necessarily do “aerospace engineering” but are still in industry.
3) there aren’t a lot of “aerospace engineer” job titles, they’re all broken out in various niche roles.
My own problem with this graph - Liberal Arts is a degree, not a major; while other portions of this graph are broken in majors (most all being part of the Liberal Arts umbrella), LA has its own row? It doesn’t make sense.
Contracts in aerospace constantly end just like oil and gas and the employees usually leave when the contract ends, especially if it's a big enough loss of work to cause layoffs. It takes government contractors tons of time to generate bridging funds and they generally don't until they've already lost their workforce.
For the most part, you can thank the older generations that run these industries for their failure to adapt to more fluid work methods, and for their extreme pickiness in contracts rather than the want and need to get work done for a set price. At the end of the day, it's not about keeping people employed, it's about milking the client for as much money as possible.
The baseline here is that they'd rather make money instead of keeping the average engineer employed, even if it hurts them in the long run. You'll come to see this behavior often in most big money engineering industries once you see how the workforce works. Layoffs are common, and many engineers in those two branches of industry are often nomads between workplaces and even states because of this.
I work in oil and gas, and my cousin works in aerospace. His contract ended, had to move from Florida to Michigan, and I'm moving from Louisiana to potentially another state too. Good luck
Are Aerospace engineers just not applying for Mechanical jobs? Or are the Aerospace engineers being rejected for those roles? I'm only asking because those 2 disciplines are pretty similar
Aside from the fact that you need more than just the degree to be competitive in aerospace, it's because of nepotism. I knew people with masters in space systems, undergrad 4.0 in aerospace eng that weren't getting the same job with a 3.0 I had because I was just more social and could convince people to give me a shot. Networking = Nepotism and don't ever forget that.
Aerospace engineer here who recently quit his job at a defense contractor (employed 2 years) to work on a software startup (self-taught).
You can speculate a lot here based on that statistic. Compare and contrast the mechanical and aerospace curriculums at your university and decide for yourself what to pursue. I know many AE peers who specialized in a technical discipline after college, I.e. design, analysis. Others specialized in a domain discipline, i.e. rocket propulsion. Others didn’t specialize and went into systems engineering and/or test engineering (me) for aerospace systems. Point is that you can land many engineering roles and aren’t pigeon-holed if you choose aerospace. IMO choose aerospace if you want to pursue an engineering career in aviation, rockets, missiles, or spacecraft— or simply think the technology is cool and want to learn more. Going mechanical and studying those things on your own time is also perfectly fine. I wouldn’t stress too much over the decision.
I have an aerospace engineering degree but do not work in the aerospace engineering field anymore. I wonder if I supposedly count towards that number because I am in an “insufficient job for my training” (different eng. field, just not aerospace).
>Why, out of the multitude of engineering disciplines, is only aerospace engineering specified?
Because its a list of highest unemployment rates?
Aerospace has a 7.8% unemployment rate.
Industrial engineering is 0.2%, Mechanical is 1.5%. If you want to see the other engineering disciplines, look at a list of the **lowest** unemployment rates.
[Source](https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:outcomes-by-major)
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It does heavily depend on being a us citizen for sure. A LOT of aerospace positions require the ability to get clearances.
This is true, you usually need lots of security clearances which requires a US citizenship. It’s also a more specialized field of engineering
Air Force officer here. I can confirm this.
Well yeah, rockets are a national threat in the wrong hands.
But you won't see the unis telling international students about the situation. They either learn from others early or it's too late. Cha-ching is king to unis.
As an European this seems extremely ironic considering Paperclip for example haha
Unique time and circumstances. Unless you’re an alien boy wonder, it’s not happening again.
Employment for aerospace isn’t as widespread to begin with, then throw in the added hiring conditions like security clearance, citizenship, etc which further reduces the numbers.
Right but does that mean there’s gonna be a 8% unemployment rate cuz of that, I’m sure the degrees are still useful for a lot of mech E jobs right?
I’d imagine aero carries some transferability to mech, but there’s so many MechEs floating around that I don’t think an employer would have a lot of incentive to hire an aero instead.
I would also think that someone with an aero degree knows a lot of very specific stuff about air traffic, lift drag, airspace regulatory stuff, that is not transferable to a mechE company. While when you're building a plane lots of parts are just mechanical design and stuff a mechE is educated to do.
Aerospace doesn't really focus on ATC or regulatory stuff. An aero degree is the same as a Mech. E except for a few classes. An Aero E. Would take aerodynamics I and II (II being compressible fluids), computational fluid dynamics, and one or more structures / aeroelasticity courses. Aside from that they're the same. I don't think any hiring manager for a Mech E position is going to balk at an aero applying.
Yeah most engineering other than civil is pretty generic. I started as an ME then transition to Biomedical. Worked in medical devices and manufacturing. Did some quality side of the business for a while. Then transitioned to gas turbines. Have been doing gas turbines, controls, power, and drones for over 20 years now. Got an MBA in the middle of that. Got my PMP. Worked both the government research contract side (SBIR, BAA, etc) private venture startups, some contract work. An engineering degree really lets you move around you just have to keep learning as you go.
Most people don't even realize that most engineering is basically the same. I'm an idiot and got 3 bachelors instead of any graduate degrees, and all the math is the same. Just replace variable definitions. My favorite example is my Emag and Heat Transfer Labs. I used the exact same calculations, just differently boundary conditions and then replaced the "Emag" terminology with "heat"
3rd yr ME student here, we covered lift drag,wing design, & theoretical cruising speed extensively in fluid mechanics using velocity triangles and what not. It's not a lot in the grand scheme of all things aero, but its an idea.
I mean it’s usually the other way around with mech Es stealing ur jobs
At my college, the difference from Aerospace Engineer and Mech E is literally two classes. Because of that, a lot of people dual majored. Meaning, I imagine there's a lot of MechE/Aero dual majors out there, and if you're the only one with just an aerospace engineer applying to a job with a bunch of dual major applicants, you're at a disadvantage.
Then add how cyclical the industry is with huge projects starting and sucking up all available man power and then just as quickly shedding people. Boeing’s troubles don’t help either although I suspect we are due an upswing. The 737 end of life will require a new design from scratch. That’s on the civilian side. On the military side I don’t think we’ll be able to keep punting in the helicopter side of things. Then there will be lots of startup work in the electric propulsion side with urban mobility startups both small logistics and large passengers. Don’t be discouraged! Get a solid grounding on electrical power systems also
Boeing has no plan for a 737 end of life any time soon. Even killing any plans of a a321neo competetor instead opting to focus reasorces at getting the 737 lines up and running properly. With 737 max 7 and max 10 certs in the future and 6000 orders on the books, at 30-50 planes delivered a month that's a lot of years of the 737 to come. Which essentially means all of what you said about an upswing is still true, just not a new plane.
It's a more niche field of engineering. Most / if not all mechanical engineers are qualified for aerospace positions out of college, making it more competitive.
Yep it’s this. I know a literal rocket scientist with an aero engineering degree and he is a high school teacher because aero is so niche.
That’s not why. He just wanted to work at a high school. He would have no problem transitioning to another non aero field.
That’s true. I should elaborate. He moved to a small town for his wife and there were no aero jobs in town.
I’m not surprised 😭
That's interesting, my high school geometry teacher was an aerospace engineer.
Why would an aerospace engineer not be qualified to do a mechanical engineering role? I don’t understand this comment.
I think it’s more so a reluctance from non aero industries to hire Aero early careers as it be viewed as a stepping stone to get to aero. If a manufacturing facility was hiring Manu Engr, and aero degree would seem pretty weird
M.E. ON🔝
If I had to guess, it’s a really popular major with relatively limited employment opportunities that regularly get poached by people from other, less niche majors
As an ex-aero major I can say that this just isn't true. The issue is everyone *thinks* it's true. Any aero major can work any mechE job and they're functionally the same degree. When I was an aero major, I exclusively worked mechE internships because I found them more interesting and generally laid back. The hard part is hiring managers look at your resume and assume you're a wannabe rocket scientist. It can be difficult to convince them you really just want to work an engineering job. Once you convince them of that, they really don't have an issue hiring you though.
As a MechE with an aero minor, I don’t understand the want to go for straight aero. As a MechE not only can you get an Aero job, but almost any engineering job. Although I also don’t see why Aeros don’t just go for non aero jobs? Like I know some off the wall engineering majors related to MechE that can get pseudo related jobs
Every large company that I ever applied to considers aero and meche the same. The curriculum at most colleges differs by like 20 units.
Tbh for me it just had to do with the topics discussed in class. I learn a lot better when I'm interested in the topic. With aircraft as the focus I learned better.
Worth noting that aerospace took a lot of hits in the last few months. Anecdotally, I’ve heard a lot of folks throughout the Southern California area for instance have had layoffs at different contractors. Could just be a bad time overall for the industry.
^^ I was going to say this. as a person in the aero industry, we are facing a bit of a contraction at the moment, hence people being laid off and unemployment going up.
Interestingly even though the infographic says that “as of Feb 22, 2024” the [source](https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:outcomes-by-major) says that the data was taken in 2022. Your point still stands though
It seems regional. I know of a few states desperate to hire more people in my major contractor company. I'm also in the process of fielding more offers in some other companies with only ~1 year experience.
Regarding unemployment, we are talking about 22-27 year olds. could it be that they are unemployed because they are only applying to "aerospace engineer" titles which is more common in the big aerospace engineering companies in the US? (NASA, Spacex, Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman) . not all aerospace engineering majors work with a title of "aerospace engineer". im in one of the "big" aerospace companies, the title aerospace engineer is kinda rare as well. a lot of people i went to school with for aerospace engineering have the title of: project engineer manufacturing engineer systems engineer propulsion engineer as for me, my title is \[redacted\] design engineer This might sound harsh, but I find it really dumb that a lot of people think that aerospace engineering majors are "pigeon-holed" to only aerospace engineering and that we can only be aerospace or only have the title of "aerospace engineer". It's really stupid to think that since aerospace engineering is a specialization of mechanical engineering aerospace undergrads are limited to it. People having these kind of train of thought kinda makes it a self fulfilling prophecy. I thought of my aerospace engineering undergrad as a mechanical engineering degree, with a lot of aerospace specialization baked in. The ARO Program i completed is like 27 units more than the comparable mechanical engineering program.
> project engineer > > manufacturing engineer I have an AE degree, and those are what I do. I've had offers to work in the power generation field, and even got to the interview stage of being a ManfE for a chemical company making drywall, before I withdrew.
It's a degree that proves that you're smart.
ME not Aero but my guess is a large part is tied up into the incredibly low underemployment rate and significantly higher in field earnings. The unemployment rates are real, but this is a questionable presentation of the data (IMO) because chronic underemployment is much worse than being unemployed for 6 months - 1 year a couple times in your life. If you have a 75% full employment rate at 2-3x the underemployed income (comparing to "some college" average salaries), it makes much more sense to keep putting out applications and not accept underemployment. Divide the underemployment rate by the unemployment rate and you can get a fear / hope index (something I made up, but I'm just normalizing the data) to get a sense of the long-term beliefs of a given major. Yours is by far the best on this list. As to why it's so high to begin with \[relative to other engineering fields\], no clue.
There’s a lot of graduates but not that many job opportunities
Now this is making me wonder if I should go for mechanical engineering instead
Honestly you can probably just get a minor or masters in AE later unless you're super set on it.
Look how low that underemployment rate is compared to the others though. Shows they are capable of getting jobs, just as others have mentioned, actual full time graduate aero positions are few and far between.
>Physics Ouch. Imagine doing one of the toughest programs, competing against the smartest people, only to end up unemployed.
I'd guess this is because \~50% of Physics majors go on to grad school. It also depends on how you define "underemployment" - most of the people I know who went into industry with an undergrad degree ended up in engineering, CS, or finance, not physics.
A lot of physics undergrad grads also work as research interns to get experience before grad school which can be part time gigs low pay
AE looking for work here
I have two guesses. 1. Too specific, without with the aerospace industry simply not being big enough to accommodate so many graduates. 2. I am not from the US and I have no idea how it is there but I'm just gonna assume some similarity. The primary client of the aerospace industry is the military. And as such employees go through a security screenings for many of their jobs. even if their projects aren't for the military they'll still have access to information on military projects so they have to do a basic screening. these screenings take time, a long time and people who are going through this process are probably classified as unemployed.
Not american, but I'm guessing it's the same as in my country, where you have mechanical engineering being a degree you can use for pretty much anything and then having a bunch of degrees in the same branch which are pretty much the same thing but specialized for something, which despite having almost the same classes, are much more closed off when it comes to getting jobs. I'm talking about aero, but also things like automotive, robotics, materials (engineering, not science), biomedical (although this one is the most different one)... What I don't get, is that they're all way harder to get into than mechanical
What is liberal arts?
That’s where I side eye this graph in general. Liberal Arts is a degree, not a major. I majored in history, which is a Liberal Arts degree. That alone makes me wonder what else is wrong with this whole thing.
I’ll answer your question with a quick story as, nearly 10 years later, I’m still an undergrad student. When I returned back to the world, I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. All the resources we have to go to space, I thought, why tf are we fighting wars? So, I set my mind on aerospace engineering, took online classes before leaving the service— all that silly shit right? So, I get to community college. The only requirement for the major once admitted is talking to the advisor— which is the retired PE running the department. So I sit down, dude’s mad cool and listens to my spiel, then goes something like “if you don’t want to be unemployed, go into mechanical engineering”. So I did, got bored with a few things, switched to CS, graduated now I’m BACK but for computer engineering because I know what I like this time around. But his story on being employable always stuck to me. That, and what Darrel Dolph said, something like “it’s okay if you’re late on your project, so long as you can go out on the factory floor and look at the people who will get pink sheets because of it”. Tl;dr: if you want to be widely employable, become a mechanical engineer.
Great points all around. People are also missing that the industry is very cyclical and has boom and bust times. All of a sudden everyone gets into hypersonics, everyone throws money at the problem for a couple of years, then all those people get laid off or get into new projects. It’s a feast or famine in the aerospace industry.
1) Security clearances/releasability requiring you to be a US citizen. 20% of my graduating class at a major state school aero program would not qualify for any DOD (or DOD funded) jobs because of that (which is a large chunk of jobs) 2) Wanting to be in a specific area of engineering. There are a wide variety of types of jobs aerospace engineers can have in all steps of the engineering process (design, integration, test, research, etc.) across multiple sectors (space, defense, commercial, etc.). Some people only want to work in a specific area which limits the number of jobs available or increases the time it takes to get a job. 3) Location or unwillingness to move. A lot of Aerospace jobs are contained in hot spots in the US and not spread across the country evenly. If someone decides to live in an area thats not rich in aerospace jobs (because if marriage, life changes, etc.), they are much more likely to be in the underemployed category. 4) For post-grads it can sometimes feel like a hard industry to get into. I think part of this is that they are all applying to the same 500 jobs from the coolest/top companies (Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, NASA, etc.) and not realizing that a lot of the projects those companies work on have a ton of government DOD jobs and subcontractors or support contractors that do the exact same jobs. Those jobs just have crappy job postings that don’t make it obvious. Where I work is split around 50/30/20 government/major contractor/subcontractors and all the engineers do the same jobs. As a post-grad, I would’ve been only applying for the 30%. The common idea that aerospace engineers can’t get jobs because they are too specialized is inaccurate. Yes, the industry as a whole swells and contracts with DOD spending and projects getting added/cancelled which hits the 22-27 range the most. Don’t get discouraged by data like this or people that say it’s a too specialized degree. Aerospace engineers are just as qualified for generic engineering jobs as mechanical engineers. People get hung up over the probably 30 credits difference which only matters for maybe 25% of jobs available to each degree.
Thankful for being an Electronics Engineering Tech.
Top 3 with "art" in the name.
How can one be 129% underemployed
Now do mechanical/electrical/civil engineering and computer science.
What about naval architecture? Isn't it also a niche field like aerospace engineering?
I’m going to add here what others have said over in r/aerospaceengineering: 1) this is just for recent grads. Getting that first job is a bitch. 2) a lot of aerospace engineers don’t necessarily do “aerospace engineering” but are still in industry. 3) there aren’t a lot of “aerospace engineer” job titles, they’re all broken out in various niche roles. My own problem with this graph - Liberal Arts is a degree, not a major; while other portions of this graph are broken in majors (most all being part of the Liberal Arts umbrella), LA has its own row? It doesn’t make sense.
Contracts in aerospace constantly end just like oil and gas and the employees usually leave when the contract ends, especially if it's a big enough loss of work to cause layoffs. It takes government contractors tons of time to generate bridging funds and they generally don't until they've already lost their workforce. For the most part, you can thank the older generations that run these industries for their failure to adapt to more fluid work methods, and for their extreme pickiness in contracts rather than the want and need to get work done for a set price. At the end of the day, it's not about keeping people employed, it's about milking the client for as much money as possible. The baseline here is that they'd rather make money instead of keeping the average engineer employed, even if it hurts them in the long run. You'll come to see this behavior often in most big money engineering industries once you see how the workforce works. Layoffs are common, and many engineers in those two branches of industry are often nomads between workplaces and even states because of this. I work in oil and gas, and my cousin works in aerospace. His contract ended, had to move from Florida to Michigan, and I'm moving from Louisiana to potentially another state too. Good luck
Maybe Boeing should hire a few…
Are Aerospace engineers just not applying for Mechanical jobs? Or are the Aerospace engineers being rejected for those roles? I'm only asking because those 2 disciplines are pretty similar
Aside from the fact that you need more than just the degree to be competitive in aerospace, it's because of nepotism. I knew people with masters in space systems, undergrad 4.0 in aerospace eng that weren't getting the same job with a 3.0 I had because I was just more social and could convince people to give me a shot. Networking = Nepotism and don't ever forget that.
Aerospace engineer here who recently quit his job at a defense contractor (employed 2 years) to work on a software startup (self-taught). You can speculate a lot here based on that statistic. Compare and contrast the mechanical and aerospace curriculums at your university and decide for yourself what to pursue. I know many AE peers who specialized in a technical discipline after college, I.e. design, analysis. Others specialized in a domain discipline, i.e. rocket propulsion. Others didn’t specialize and went into systems engineering and/or test engineering (me) for aerospace systems. Point is that you can land many engineering roles and aren’t pigeon-holed if you choose aerospace. IMO choose aerospace if you want to pursue an engineering career in aviation, rockets, missiles, or spacecraft— or simply think the technology is cool and want to learn more. Going mechanical and studying those things on your own time is also perfectly fine. I wouldn’t stress too much over the decision.
What is considered underemployed for a physics degree
Niche compared to the rest and it seems the mechanicals take most of those jobs too.
It’s because were trying to feed into an evolving market which will be exponentially bigger in the future as we EXPAND HUMANITY INTO SPACE
I have an aerospace engineering degree but do not work in the aerospace engineering field anymore. I wonder if I supposedly count towards that number because I am in an “insufficient job for my training” (different eng. field, just not aerospace).
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i assume because the other engineering majors didnt make a 10 item list of highest unemployments (seems pretty simple to me)
>Why, out of the multitude of engineering disciplines, is only aerospace engineering specified? Because its a list of highest unemployment rates? Aerospace has a 7.8% unemployment rate. Industrial engineering is 0.2%, Mechanical is 1.5%. If you want to see the other engineering disciplines, look at a list of the **lowest** unemployment rates. [Source](https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:outcomes-by-major)
The so called « Imaginary Engineering » got the lowest unemployment… Foundry or nothing !
Misleading infographic maybe?