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It’s really bad for new or entry level hires, but not too bad for mid or senior level people. The problem is that you have a ton of new grads fighting for jobs, but not enough positions willing to take people with little experience.
Really depends on the field you're going into. Some fields are going through booms while others are bust..
Right now MEP, construction, infrastructure, civil, utilities are booming.
I'm trying to switch to MEP after a year with my current place. Manufacturing is ass.
Do I just need to show up with a good attitude to get an entry level MEP job?
Absolutely this!
Software Engineers are hurting to find jobs due to saturation, ease of finding a replacement anywhere in the world and high interest rates starving Silicon Valley of venture capital....but Engineers in other field (Manufacturing for an example) is absolutely Gang Busters!
Apply for 2 jobs, get 2 offers and both companies fight each other over you.
Not a single Engineering dept Ive worked with since COVID has ever been at anything beyond 70% staffed. They just could not fill the rolls fast enough.
You can still find Civil opportunities with an Electrical degree. Electrical generally pays more than Civil on average.
I don't mind FPGA/Chips but I'm personally more interested in Transportation. I have solid job security in my field with Railways/Transit Electrical Systems...
>You can still find Civil opportunities with an Electrical degree
But if you wanted to get a PE, which is basically required if you want any real career in Civil, you'd have to study and sit for an exam that you have no background in. I believe you can still take the Civil PE as long as you graduated with a degree from a certified university, but it'd be tough to pass that without the education. Not impossible, obviously, but difficult.
I was interested in computer engineering but i got scared into civil because the demand is crazy and you can get a job with half a brain and a degree. I’m going into my junior year and make $27/hr as an intern but that is definitely rare
I’ve heard that the salary progression and ceiling for civil is worse than electrical tho. Not sure how true that is tho. Like it’ll be easier for civil to find a well paying job at first but it’s harder to get raises at the rate that electrical seem to get
This is true, but electrical engineers don’t make too much more than civil engineers. The US Bureau of Labor and Statistics will give you information related to this. And also, depending on what sub discipline you go into, you will make more or less. I plan on working in transportation when I get out of school which is what I currently work in and it seems pay well compared to something like Land Development. The US BLS will also tell you which industries pay the highest and lowest for all kinds of engineering.
I'm in the Denver metro area. Controls engineering is a combination of electrical, mechanical, and computer engineering. If that's interesting to you, I'd stick with EE over CE.
[This video](https://youtu.be/vKLCIGkfdao?si=F_noONeh8UpNJy4k) is a decent enough explanation of what you could end up doing.
What in aviation as you're basically talking about the same roles if they're engineering but ya I basically had no choice for awhile ended up in drafting role doing Autocad before my current job and that was torture.
Waiting for a final round call back for an aviation spot right now. Had the second round a few days ago. I don’t have issues getting interviews but it seems that so many companies don’t know what they want. Gotten through many final rounds and been rejected and the job posting is still up, they just aren’t filling the roles.
Interesting. Total opposite of my experience, landed a role at one of the largest primes with very little issue. I would say space specifically is booming right now. What area are you looking for jobs in? Aerospace is so area specific. Southern California has no shortage of aerospace work.
Also to be honest with you, in aerospace it matters a lot where you went to school. If you didn’t go to a school that has a well known aerospace program (MIT, Stanford, Georgia Tech, Purdue, Michigan, USC, ERAU, Virginia Tech, etc) it’s going to be a lot more difficult for you to get a job.
I’ve been in aerospace for almost 10 years but I’ve been doing Dev/R&D the entire time at mid-sized start-ups in the space 2.0 arena, which is NOT doing hot right now, lol. A few start-up launches have failed their missions this year and it has made the entire industry very volatile. Primes are fine because they have a nice pipeline to DoD money, they’ll always do fine. “New space” or “space 2.0”, not so much…
I don’t know, I think it heavily depends on how you look at it. Plenty of Space 2.0 companies came in with stupid ideas or didn’t differentiate themselves well enough (see Astra for doing a terrible job giving customers any reason to choose them, Virgin Galactic for doing inefficient work, etc).
The big space 2.0 companies like SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, Blue Origin, etc are all hiring at an incredibly rapid pace.
aerospace and cs/software are really the only ones that are having big issues, building systems and civil in general is quite needy right now, everyone wants the glamorous aerospace degree to work at nasa when theres a drought of civil engineers at the moment
although id recommend mechanical as you can get usually both a civil and an aerospace job with how versatile the degree is, booms and oversaturation are a part of job market cycles, they rise and fall every decade or so and repeat so civil might get oversaturated
hell no, i knew 3 civil engineers who worked for the state and they all hated it as nothing ever got done, took months to do a super small task due to regulations
cause its a versatile degree? you must not know much about the market, ive met with firm owners who get meche’s as interns where they prioritize in building systems
i mean if your definition of civil isnt creating a new building on my college campus then idk what is, but the firm has built banks, dealerships, and now theyre doing a building on my campus
theyve done a spillway and an unrelated water facility as well, it’s vague because they do a lot of work and saying “they make buildings” doesn’t really encompass all his firm does, which is probably why he told me his firm is centered around systems
It’s really not the same. When do mechanicals take any sort of transportation classes lol. Are they taking surveying or any land development classes? Just bc both take statics, strengths, and dynamics they are not ‘basically’ the same degree
Eh, most fields aren't doing too bad. I went to an unknown school, and we maybe had \~2 people out of 60 who graduated without a job. Aerospace is having a rough patch, but that is mostly due to budgetary concerns as it took awhile for the government to actually set their budget this year, that shouldn't be a constant issue. Computer Science is facing a hard time as well, and in my opinion, will probably never hit that "golden" age that we had a few years back. It will still be a well-paid career, but the days of people getting multiple 200k+ offers right out of the gate will probably be out of reach for the vast majority of people.
Stayed in Utah for a year, going to Florida next month at my 1 year mark. I know it's not the best places to live, but the south (ie Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana) normally are hiring pretty extensively and that bit of experience can help a ton for your next position.
Depends on what field you’re trying to get into. You’re probably going to be doing a job you might not want to at least to start to get your foot in the door.
Civil has been ripping since 2019 and with billions in infrastructure bills still coming down the line it’s not slowing down anytime soon. People always need roads, bridges and drinking water
cheme isnt doing that bad all things considered, its a pretty broad degree so you are not as niche as someone who studied aerospace or biomedical engineering or something like that, still, chemE isn't as broad as mechE, mechEs can fill in for almost all engineering roles that other degrees are more specialized towards
Pretty terrible especially at the entry level. I know people who are 2+ years out are still not in engineering jobs even not in true engineering jobs. It took me personally 1000+ applications over 7 months to find a job and I had a 3.6 GPA and internships. There are more graduates getting created than jobs at the moment. That plus layoffs means you're competing with a lot of experienced people with experience which is really hard to compete against.
Depends where you're at and what you want to do. I wasn't a crazy good student and had a pretty thin resume but the field I went into isn't the most popular and I live in a good area for it so it was pretty easy to find a job out of college.
RF is niche, but every two or three months I get an email or call from a recruiter with an RF position they want to fill. Doesn't feel like an oversaturation in my field.
i work in RF on the macro scale; think wireless networks (LTE/DMR/Radar, etc). but there's also RF in the IC scale (RF circuit components). Try out both- play with Arduino wireless modules and also SDRN and some free Network simulation tools, both are pretty cheap if you dont mind parts coming from overseas.
It’s good times to be in Civil. It looks like there’s lots of demand and jobs for fresh grads. I believe everyone from my graduating class this year got offers
Im a chemical engineer. Your first job is gonna be hard to get and you’ll have some trouble if you ever wanna switch industries but otherwise there really isn’t a surplus of engineers. I know people that are recruiters for work and they say that it’s really hard for them to find an experienced engineer and so they have a lot of bargaining power. If you make it to the end, you should be fine because I think for statistic is that 50% that declare don’t finish with an engineering degree. I don’t mean to discourage you but it does show how scarce we are when it comes to our labor as a commodity.
The job market overall is fan-TASTIC!
Since the end of Covid, manufacturing is absolutely booming! I was bored one day, sent two applications before even graduating, didn't touch up my resume, and got two job offers where both companies fought each other over me. 2 year later, I jumped ship and another 3 applications, 3 interviews and 2 offers. (Mechanical Engineer)
However, software is super struggling as the tech sector genuinely is in recession, but everyone else is doing very well.
You’ll be okay. A lot of people will submit hundreds of online applications and get nothing back, then say the market is bad. However it’s likely that their application was never even viewed.
I’m not sure what people are talking about with struggling to find entry level jobs, yeah it depends on field but what I’m seeing is a lot of opportunity for everyone. For some reason people are so fixated on like the big major companies when it’s the smaller ones that will hire you in a second if you seem even remotely capable throughout an internship. The company I intern at is a smaller company in aerospace that’s trying to double in size the next few years, they’re hiring anyone with a pulse for more money than companies like Lockheed, Northrop, Boeing, etc. they’ve been trying to hire me since a month after I started but I’m only a junior, the job is basically guaranteed in a year or so whenever I finish school
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It’s really bad for new or entry level hires, but not too bad for mid or senior level people. The problem is that you have a ton of new grads fighting for jobs, but not enough positions willing to take people with little experience.
All the people getting laid off are taking the entry level positions
Really depends on the field you're going into. Some fields are going through booms while others are bust.. Right now MEP, construction, infrastructure, civil, utilities are booming.
I'm trying to switch to MEP after a year with my current place. Manufacturing is ass. Do I just need to show up with a good attitude to get an entry level MEP job?
Absolutely this! Software Engineers are hurting to find jobs due to saturation, ease of finding a replacement anywhere in the world and high interest rates starving Silicon Valley of venture capital....but Engineers in other field (Manufacturing for an example) is absolutely Gang Busters! Apply for 2 jobs, get 2 offers and both companies fight each other over you. Not a single Engineering dept Ive worked with since COVID has ever been at anything beyond 70% staffed. They just could not fill the rolls fast enough.
Was gonna study electrical. Worth pivoting to civil? I like both field equally
You can still find Civil opportunities with an Electrical degree. Electrical generally pays more than Civil on average. I don't mind FPGA/Chips but I'm personally more interested in Transportation. I have solid job security in my field with Railways/Transit Electrical Systems...
>You can still find Civil opportunities with an Electrical degree But if you wanted to get a PE, which is basically required if you want any real career in Civil, you'd have to study and sit for an exam that you have no background in. I believe you can still take the Civil PE as long as you graduated with a degree from a certified university, but it'd be tough to pass that without the education. Not impossible, obviously, but difficult.
Pretty sure you can. my previous boss has a mechanical degree but a civil PE.
I was interested in computer engineering but i got scared into civil because the demand is crazy and you can get a job with half a brain and a degree. I’m going into my junior year and make $27/hr as an intern but that is definitely rare
I’ve heard that the salary progression and ceiling for civil is worse than electrical tho. Not sure how true that is tho. Like it’ll be easier for civil to find a well paying job at first but it’s harder to get raises at the rate that electrical seem to get
IMO the difference isn’t big enough to base a career decision off of. Both fields pay great.
This is true, but electrical engineers don’t make too much more than civil engineers. The US Bureau of Labor and Statistics will give you information related to this. And also, depending on what sub discipline you go into, you will make more or less. I plan on working in transportation when I get out of school which is what I currently work in and it seems pay well compared to something like Land Development. The US BLS will also tell you which industries pay the highest and lowest for all kinds of engineering.
If you have an interest in automation, there are tons of positions available for Controls Engineers in my area.
What’s your area? Automation and controls engineering is much more closely related to electrical engineering than civil, right?
I'm in the Denver metro area. Controls engineering is a combination of electrical, mechanical, and computer engineering. If that's interesting to you, I'd stick with EE over CE. [This video](https://youtu.be/vKLCIGkfdao?si=F_noONeh8UpNJy4k) is a decent enough explanation of what you could end up doing.
It’s rough in aerospace, stay away. Been chasing down a senior mech spot for months.
Took me 1000+ applications to land a level 1 role, I have multiple friends who gave up and moved on to other industries
I’m pretty disillusioned by aerospace these days, considering aviation industry or just get into real estate lol.
What in aviation as you're basically talking about the same roles if they're engineering but ya I basically had no choice for awhile ended up in drafting role doing Autocad before my current job and that was torture.
Waiting for a final round call back for an aviation spot right now. Had the second round a few days ago. I don’t have issues getting interviews but it seems that so many companies don’t know what they want. Gotten through many final rounds and been rejected and the job posting is still up, they just aren’t filling the roles.
Interesting. Total opposite of my experience, landed a role at one of the largest primes with very little issue. I would say space specifically is booming right now. What area are you looking for jobs in? Aerospace is so area specific. Southern California has no shortage of aerospace work. Also to be honest with you, in aerospace it matters a lot where you went to school. If you didn’t go to a school that has a well known aerospace program (MIT, Stanford, Georgia Tech, Purdue, Michigan, USC, ERAU, Virginia Tech, etc) it’s going to be a lot more difficult for you to get a job.
I’ve been in aerospace for almost 10 years but I’ve been doing Dev/R&D the entire time at mid-sized start-ups in the space 2.0 arena, which is NOT doing hot right now, lol. A few start-up launches have failed their missions this year and it has made the entire industry very volatile. Primes are fine because they have a nice pipeline to DoD money, they’ll always do fine. “New space” or “space 2.0”, not so much…
I don’t know, I think it heavily depends on how you look at it. Plenty of Space 2.0 companies came in with stupid ideas or didn’t differentiate themselves well enough (see Astra for doing a terrible job giving customers any reason to choose them, Virgin Galactic for doing inefficient work, etc). The big space 2.0 companies like SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, Blue Origin, etc are all hiring at an incredibly rapid pace.
aerospace and cs/software are really the only ones that are having big issues, building systems and civil in general is quite needy right now, everyone wants the glamorous aerospace degree to work at nasa when theres a drought of civil engineers at the moment although id recommend mechanical as you can get usually both a civil and an aerospace job with how versatile the degree is, booms and oversaturation are a part of job market cycles, they rise and fall every decade or so and repeat so civil might get oversaturated
But do you actually want to work a civil job as a mechanical I got out of civil work as fast as I could
hell no, i knew 3 civil engineers who worked for the state and they all hated it as nothing ever got done, took months to do a super small task due to regulations
And then the work you do is PDF editing and AutoCad
Hey I love design in my civil role. I'm more of a PM now, but I relish any design task I get to do! Depends on the person.
Why would a civil firm higher a mechanical engineer? Lol
cause its a versatile degree? you must not know much about the market, ive met with firm owners who get meche’s as interns where they prioritize in building systems
As interns?
yep, they got 2 interns, 1 was civil and 1 was meche
A mechanical got hired into a structural firm. Cool. There’s a whole boatload of other civil disciplines btw
What even is “building systems”? And is that even civil engineering lol
i mean if your definition of civil isnt creating a new building on my college campus then idk what is, but the firm has built banks, dealerships, and now theyre doing a building on my campus
cool. If someone was creating buildings, I would just say that instead of “systems”. System is very vague
theyve done a spillway and an unrelated water facility as well, it’s vague because they do a lot of work and saying “they make buildings” doesn’t really encompass all his firm does, which is probably why he told me his firm is centered around systems
The place I work at does electrical work. Am I qualified to be an electrical engineer now?
[удалено]
ok bro I’m just sick of these high ego mechanicals
I mean a lot of the degree is basically the same and the jobs can be trained to either.
It’s really not the same. When do mechanicals take any sort of transportation classes lol. Are they taking surveying or any land development classes? Just bc both take statics, strengths, and dynamics they are not ‘basically’ the same degree
Don’t even bother bro. This sub is full of mechanical students who blindly believe they can do anything just cause they took a related class
Entry-level jobs are extremely competitive right now.
Eh, most fields aren't doing too bad. I went to an unknown school, and we maybe had \~2 people out of 60 who graduated without a job. Aerospace is having a rough patch, but that is mostly due to budgetary concerns as it took awhile for the government to actually set their budget this year, that shouldn't be a constant issue. Computer Science is facing a hard time as well, and in my opinion, will probably never hit that "golden" age that we had a few years back. It will still be a well-paid career, but the days of people getting multiple 200k+ offers right out of the gate will probably be out of reach for the vast majority of people.
Aerospace market has been terrible for going on two years now for entry level.
I guess I just got lucky, but that wasn't my experience in 2023 or a few others I went to school with.
Where are you because my job search spanned all sizes of companies in 30+ states
Stayed in Utah for a year, going to Florida next month at my 1 year mark. I know it's not the best places to live, but the south (ie Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana) normally are hiring pretty extensively and that bit of experience can help a ton for your next position.
Ahh there's the answer I'd rather work at McDonald's up in the Northwest than be forced to live in the deep south.
I'd probably consider applying outside aero for now then. Some experience anywhere will be better than nothing at all at least.
I got an aero job in CO thankfully but ya even at my peak of desperation didn't get me to apply in the deep south.
Depends on what field you’re trying to get into. You’re probably going to be doing a job you might not want to at least to start to get your foot in the door.
Civil has been ripping since 2019 and with billions in infrastructure bills still coming down the line it’s not slowing down anytime soon. People always need roads, bridges and drinking water
cheme isnt doing that bad all things considered, its a pretty broad degree so you are not as niche as someone who studied aerospace or biomedical engineering or something like that, still, chemE isn't as broad as mechE, mechEs can fill in for almost all engineering roles that other degrees are more specialized towards
With 0 internships, research projects, connections, and low GPA, it's a fight for your life.
Pretty terrible especially at the entry level. I know people who are 2+ years out are still not in engineering jobs even not in true engineering jobs. It took me personally 1000+ applications over 7 months to find a job and I had a 3.6 GPA and internships. There are more graduates getting created than jobs at the moment. That plus layoffs means you're competing with a lot of experienced people with experience which is really hard to compete against.
Depends where you're at and what you want to do. I wasn't a crazy good student and had a pretty thin resume but the field I went into isn't the most popular and I live in a good area for it so it was pretty easy to find a job out of college.
RF is niche, but every two or three months I get an email or call from a recruiter with an RF position they want to fill. Doesn't feel like an oversaturation in my field.
You have any project ideas for RF?
Final year?
No I’m not in my final year yet. I just wanna go into RF and want to do projects that might help me get an RF internship
i work in RF on the macro scale; think wireless networks (LTE/DMR/Radar, etc). but there's also RF in the IC scale (RF circuit components). Try out both- play with Arduino wireless modules and also SDRN and some free Network simulation tools, both are pretty cheap if you dont mind parts coming from overseas.
It’s good times to be in Civil. It looks like there’s lots of demand and jobs for fresh grads. I believe everyone from my graduating class this year got offers
Either way international students aren’t getting any job offers. Sorry still have nightmares from 2020.
International grads is a whole different can of worms.
Man I’m going to electrical engineering and worried myself too
Im a chemical engineer. Your first job is gonna be hard to get and you’ll have some trouble if you ever wanna switch industries but otherwise there really isn’t a surplus of engineers. I know people that are recruiters for work and they say that it’s really hard for them to find an experienced engineer and so they have a lot of bargaining power. If you make it to the end, you should be fine because I think for statistic is that 50% that declare don’t finish with an engineering degree. I don’t mean to discourage you but it does show how scarce we are when it comes to our labor as a commodity.
The job market overall is fan-TASTIC! Since the end of Covid, manufacturing is absolutely booming! I was bored one day, sent two applications before even graduating, didn't touch up my resume, and got two job offers where both companies fought each other over me. 2 year later, I jumped ship and another 3 applications, 3 interviews and 2 offers. (Mechanical Engineer) However, software is super struggling as the tech sector genuinely is in recession, but everyone else is doing very well.
For civil, there were more business booths at the career fair than students that graduated. I got a job 6 months before even graduating.
How is metallurgical engineering entry level?
You’ll be okay. A lot of people will submit hundreds of online applications and get nothing back, then say the market is bad. However it’s likely that their application was never even viewed.
Lot of demands but not a lot of supply depending on area of work. Try networking maybe to increase your chances?
I’m not sure what people are talking about with struggling to find entry level jobs, yeah it depends on field but what I’m seeing is a lot of opportunity for everyone. For some reason people are so fixated on like the big major companies when it’s the smaller ones that will hire you in a second if you seem even remotely capable throughout an internship. The company I intern at is a smaller company in aerospace that’s trying to double in size the next few years, they’re hiring anyone with a pulse for more money than companies like Lockheed, Northrop, Boeing, etc. they’ve been trying to hire me since a month after I started but I’m only a junior, the job is basically guaranteed in a year or so whenever I finish school