A lot of it depends on school and location. If you’re in an area that was hit hard by the housing bust (California, Nevada, Florida), you’ll be pretty much out of luck unless you are in a great school that works closely with industry. Even in 2009, Cal Poly SLO civil engineering grads had a job placement rate that was close to 80%.</p>
<p>But if you’re in the Midwest, it isn’t that tough to find a job that’s somewhat related to civil engineering. Right now, western North Dakota is looking for anyone they can find. There’s a huge labor shortage there, unemployment rates are below 3%, and places like NDSU (North Dakota State University) have a job placement rate of almost 100%:</p>
I have a question: suppose someone (let’s call him Steve) majors in civil engineering in 2006, gets good grades, and picks up a few months of internship experience. He graduates in 2010 and can’t find any engineering jobs, so he drives a truck the next few years in order to pay off his student loans.</p>
<p>In 2015, the construction industry returns to normal. Can Steve get back into the civil engineering field if he puts in a reasonable effort into finding entry-level engineering jobs? Or will he be forced to go to graduate school to keep his skills fresh? I doubt that the engineering field will be much different in 2015 than in 2010, but I’m wondering how employers will look at this.</p>
<p>The problem with being out of the industry for a few years is that employers will assume that one’s skills have decayed, whether or not that is actually true. This is also true of employment in general – long term unemployed people find it harder to get jobs because employers assume that someone who is long term unemployed is at the bottom of the quality scale, whether or not that is actually true (though it is probably more common than in the general population of job applicants for a given type of job).</p>