<p>I guess it's time to rethink that major in civil engineering, no?</p>
<p>10 American Industries That Will Never Recover</p>
<p>Construction</p>
<p>Nationwide construction unemployment was 17% in August, up from 16.5% in the same month last year. Over the course of the summer, government statistics have shown sharp drops in the construction of new homes and apartments. Building permits are also down. Most large housing markets have more than 12 months of unsold inventory on hand. There is also a shadow inventory of unsold homes those that have gone into foreclosure but have not been put on the market by banks. Foreclosures and defaults are expected to rise another 3 million to 3.5 million this year.</p>
<p>Well, the fact is that during the past few years, we built way too many houses, apartment buildings, office buildings, strip malls, etc. There is no reason to construct anything new for a VERY long time.</p>
<p>I will agree with you that it’s unlikely the industry will go back to the way things were during the building boom. That doesn’t mean things won’t get better. I started internships during that period and we (construction management) were hiring left and right and pulling people out of retirement. Some were only liberal arts majors with no construction experience. I don’t see the buildings sector going back to an era like that.</p>
<p>The infrastructure side is looking better than the private sector right now.</p>
<p>There’s been civil engineering and construction ongoing for thousands of years all over the world. It’s not going to go away forever due to a recession. If it does, we as a society have a big problem.</p>
<p>Obama’s infastrcuture bill is not going through. Every Democratic and Republican Senator is running away from it like the plague. Even it passes, it will have no effect on the market as $50b is way too small.</p>
<p>"But more-liberal Dems are jumping ship, too. According to National Journal’s 2009 rankings, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet is near the middle of his caucus politically, but he’s also in very serious danger in November’s election. And, lo and behold, he quickly came out against the project: “Public-private partnerships that improve our infrastructure are a good idea, but must be paid for, should not add a dime to the deficit and should be covered by unused Recovery Act dollars,” he said in a statement. “We must make hard choices to significantly reduce the deficit.”</p>
<p>It does not matter if this infrastructure plan go through or not. Things will just decay and collapse in the long run, there will be a few unfortunate fatalities along the way, and things will be rebuilt from scratch under emergency contracts more expensively instead of being rehabilitated now by putting contracts out to bid at a cheaper cost.</p>
<p>Homer, you do realize that only 10% of America is inhabited. There are 90% of green area in the US. I’m sure there will be new construcion projects in the future.</p>
<p>The market for civil engineers (like anything else) depends on two factors: supply and demand. You are only looking at the demand side of the equation. And it’s true that the slowdown in construction could lead to a decrease in demand. </p>
<p>But to fully evaluate the state of the market, you also have to look at the supply side. And the supply of civil engineers did not boom during the past decade. For 2006 (the most recent year with [url=<a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf08321/pdf/tab50.pdf]available[/url”>http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf08321/pdf/tab50.pdf]available[/url</a>] numbers), there were 10,663 new BS degrees in civil engineering. That was the largest number in several years, but it’s not particularly high by historic standards: compare to 12,053 in 1996, or to 11,331 in 1981. </p>
<p>So over the long term, the production of civil engineers in the US has actually declined: there may well be fewer civils in the country today than there were a generation ago. There is no market problem if supply and demand both decline.</p>
<p>The market problem arises when supply rises and demand drops. For example, the supply of lawyers in the US is currently at an all-time high, but the demand for legal services appears to be falling. That’s a market in trouble. </p>
<p>
All of those things are structures. If we stop building structures, then that’s bad for architects, but not necessarily for civil engineers. Civils work on lots of other things besides structures. </p>
<p>It may be true that the real estate boom of the past decade resulted in an oversupply of structures – but it did little for transportation or utilities. There are plenty of roads, bridges, dams, water systems, sewers, and treatment plants throughout the country that are in desperate need of repair or replacement. Check out the infrastructure in your community. Chances are that much of it was constructed in the post-war boom of the 1950s or 1960s – with a 50-year design life expectancy.</p>
<p>“There are plenty of roads, bridges, dams, water systems, sewers, and treatment plants throughout the country that are in desperate need of repair or replacement.”</p>
<p>True, but there is virtually no money to complete these projects. We have so may pothalls in our streets that have been there for such a long time, I now memorize where virtually all of the pothalls are in my head. I am not kidding. We even have a pedestrian bridge to nowhere. NJ Transit built a pedestrian bridge with a staircase on one end, but left the other end unfisnished for a good 3 years and counting.</p>
Granted, a pedestrian bridge may not be a high infrastructure priority. However, that doesn’t mean that citizens are equally willing to tolerate leaky dams, cracking bridges, impure drinking water, or failing sewers.</p>
<p>Homer28, you need to be a bit more objective than that. There is absolutely no way any industrial society will allow all its infrastructure to completely collapse; even the most totalitarian individual knows the high value of having good bridges, water treatment plants, recreation areas, and other infrastructure that makes modern life possible. All that infrastructure also has high military value (and this was one of the primary reasons why it was built in the first place).</p>
<p>“pothalls” - now that’s an interesting term!</p>
<p>My husband’s master’s thesis was on fly ash. He wanted to see how effective a mixture of water and fly ash would be in repairing pot holes. He figured the red tape to get official permission to fill the holes would be daunting, so he’d drive around town at night, in his '68 Chevy pickup, and fill holes surreptitiously. His friends called him the Pothole Phantom. Some of those repairs lasted many years! He was never caught.</p>
<p>I do enjoy Homer’s threads. He makes a really good Eeyore. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to enjoy my civil engineering career in beautiful Maine. :-)</p>
Is it supposed to tie into a building that hasn’t been built yet and possibly not be in NJ Transit’s scope of work? Is there a proposed project on one side of the bridge that has since been abandoned, thus rendering the bridge useless for now? Otherwise, they must be in some serious litigation with the contractor. </p>
<p>A staircase is relatively cheap and I’d be shocked if money is the actual reason it’s not in place.</p>
<p>Congratulations to you old farts with jobs and experience. Enjoy your bubble of dismissing fresh grads or current students who are extraordinarily dismayed by the mess the economy is in. Less and less of the companies you work for come to career fairs. Less and less are hiring fresh grads with the glut of unemployed experienced PEs willing to work for peanuts. The job situation for current college grads, civil engineering majors included, is the worst it’s been since the great depression. But hey, you’ve still got a job so it can’t be that bad, right?</p>
<p>Yeah, Aggie10, you know me well - not! I actually had my share of standing in unemployment lines. There have been ups and downs. It took me almost 300 resumes to land my first job, 2000 miles away from my hometown. So I know “tough.” But I didn’t lie down and ***** and moan. My husband and I worked hard, started our own business, and are doing OK. There will be jobs for bright students with good attitudes.</p>