I have just seen there are 250.000 jobs for mechanical engineering and 33.000 for chemical engineering. But the figures look like wrong because chemical eng is one of the core branches in engineering and there is more petroleum engineering jobs than chemical .
And why exactly don’t you believe that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose job it is to make forecasts to help inform government policy, has made a poor estimate here?
because petroleum engineeeing has more jobs than chemical according to these statistics… chemical is one of the core branches in engineeeing.it looks like stupid.
Don’t confuse the number of folks working in a field with the number of folks graduating with a degree in that field. Chem E’s and Mech E’s also work in “Petroleum Engineering”.
In 2013-14 the number of BS awarded by Engineering Discipline:
Mechanical: 23,675
Chemical: 8,110
Petroleum: 1,250
One data point: Have a MechE and ChemE son. Both had plenty of job opportunities and both are now in the same field. FWIW. That said, the MechE said if he had it to do over he’d have chosen EE.
Petro is a cyclic industry likely to have a downturn that is not reflected in 2012 BLS data or predicts or even salaries (supply and demand will reduce starting salaries right away, if past lulls in say ChemE or AeroE are indicators, you just don’t have to offer money if you have 5 applicants for every job). The huge number of jobs probably reflected huge number of jobs in extraction (including fracking).
Why do you care? They are very different fields, potentially, although a new hire could probably have any of the 3 for petro. Some ChE jobs may be open to PetroEs. Few ME jobs would really search out a PetroE.
I also think ME is more stable, so 5% job growth may be more useful than some wild 25% projection followed by -25% next time BLS surveys the market. There are also a lot more PetroE majors now than ever in the past.
This is the second thread you’ve started with this theme. We tried to tell you in the other one that probably the most fundamental mistake in that logic is the idea that a given job can only be filled by one type of degree. That’s not true. For example, those petroleum engineer positions at BLS are filled by those whose degree is in petroleum engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, materials science, aerospace engineering, geology, and likely others.
Yes, i know that mistake and the thing i wanna know is that what is the scope and jobs prospects of chemical engineering vs mechanical and electrical ? I mean how many jobs are there if you have a Chem Eng degree ( environmental,materials,petroleum including al of them )
It’s probably close to those proportions but it’s really an impossible statistic to know. The best indicator is probably unemployment rates for new grads.
When i first saw that BLS figures , i really worried because i changed my department from mechE to ChemE. Then i looked to the job number of materials science, petroleum engineering in that statistics and Petroleum was bigger than chemical. Then i started to think there should be mistake or another way of calculation because Chemical is one of the core branches and is considered top paying engineering degree.
anyway, i am waiting for comments from engineers who are well informed about industry
There isn’t anyone directing what happens in the marketplace. Supply and demand are left to just sort it out. Academia is famously out of touch with the job market; their having two seemingly equivalent branches of study doesn’t signify that there are equivalent numbers of jobs for the two branches. The markets that colleges and universities are in touch with are students and donors.
Manufacturing has declined in the United States, and apparently that includes the chemical industry, at least in the sense of numbers of employees. http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1013.pdf, covering 1990 to 2010 and drawing from Bureau of Labor Statistics data, shows declines in numbers of people employed in specific manufacturing areas, including chemical manufacturing.
There is no inherent reason a country wouldn’t at some time have more need for petroleum engineers than for chemical engineers and, therefore, have more of them.
Judging by comments on its website, the Bureau of Labor Statistics data appears to be based on surveys that companies complete for it. It is indeed possible that there are problems with it. (I will be surprised if they are far off the mark - whatever small thing that’s worth.)
Meanwhile, I consider the total number of jobs advertised to be a solid indicator of the strength of (current) job prospects in a field. On Sept. 7, 2015, on the jobs website Indeed.com, I got 52,430 results for “mechanical engineer”, 48,410 for “electrical engineer”, 14,304 results for “chemical engineer”, and a mere 845 results for “petroleum engineer” (similar to “1x jobs for chemicals, 3x jobs for electrical and 4x for mechanical”). (Although the BLS has predicted job growth of 26% in petroleum engineering jobs 2012-2022, BLS statistics now show PE jobs have gone from 38,000 in 2012 to 34,000 in 2014.)
And some of the jobs arent too ideal. Depending on if you work upstream or downstream, you may be working in a plant in the middle of nowhere or on an oil platform for weeks n end.
I suggest looking at the actual job descriptions of environmental, materials, and petroleum entry-level engineer jobs being advertised to gauge the openness to hiring someone whose major is not an exact fit (while the major of other potential applicants is) and also to try to find out the numbers of environmental, materials, petroleum graduates per year (who you will competing with for those jobs). (@Gator88NE, what is the source for your engineering graduates numbers?)
