<p>If any knowledgeable people are there, can you rank engineering majors based on their easiness of getting a decent jobs and job stability. (considering a 3.0 GPA in college)
Rank the following majors: Industrial, Systems, Computer, Chemical, Petroleum, Mechanical, Electrical, Civil, Materials, Naval, Aerospace, Biomedical, Agricultural, Environmental, and any other ones that I missed.</p>
<p>All of them can be subject to industry and economic cycles, although such cycles do not happen all at the same time for each major. In 2001-2005, it was better to be a civil engineer than a computer engineer; in 2009-2013, it was better to be a computer engineer than a civil engineer. Some majors are more closely tied to specific industries (e.g. petroleum, nuclear, naval architecture, and aerospace) and their cycles than other majors.</p>
<p>Job stability depends on the economy, the industry, the area of the country and the particular company you are working for. I worked in the aerospace world for over 30 years, all with the same company. We made some large, expensive and highly engineered hardware. </p>
<p>It also depends on how good you are at your job. No company will ever want to let go of their best performers. You do that and the company has no future as the best performers are also the repository of all the company’s tribal knowledge…</p>
<p>During my career the aerospace industry was up and down but the company I worked for had very stable employment levels.</p>
<p>Also, don’t confuse major with industry. A large aerospace company (like my division) will hire all kinds of majors as all those fields are necessary to design the hardware. I was a structural engineer with a degree in civil engineering but worked on aerospace hardware (actually space hardware). </p>
<p>I know an avionics company that lays off around 200 employees every two years, with many of them being engineers. They have a very high turnover rate.</p>
<p>Their HR recruiter told me that was what the aerospace industry like. High turnover rates. I’m not sure if he was fully correct though.</p>
<p>It’s difficult to predict the future. But, any major that is very tied to a specific industry is likely to be more volatile, such as petroleum or aerospace.</p>
<p>The nature of many aerospace companies is to hire for a new project and then, as the work gets done, lay them off. You really have to look at a company’s products and the amount of engineering that goes into them. The company I worked for made hardware that involved a lot of engineering for each unit made. Our max production rate, that I ever saw, was about 1 unit a month; and that was for only a short time. </p>
<p>Kludged, the avionics company you mentioned sounds like a company in my home town that made electronic gear. My friend went to work there and talked about all the opportunities for advancement. He made manager after a year in a production group (he wasn’t an engineer). He was laid off a year later. Turned out that they kept the staff happy by issuing promotions and big pay raises. Then the cost of production was too high and they laid a bunch off and started over again. Turns out they were known for doing that and my friend didn’t pick up on that until it was too late.</p>
<p>A person I worked with used to say that a airplane project always occupied the same amount of floor space; think big hanger. In the beginning, they filled the hanger with desks for the engineers. Components would start to enter one end of the hanger and the desks would be rolling out the other. In the end, the engineering office on the production line was just a small office in the corner of the hanger. Not far from the truth for a large airplane project. </p>
<p>But you could look at the jet engine manufacturer, not as many people hired at the start of the project and the staff during the production run was a larger percentage of the peak staff as some amount of engineering was typically needed to build and maintain the engines. Not total stability but a lot better.</p>
<p>When you interview with a company, it is a good time to look around and check the company out for many things. Go in with your eyes open and be aware. One thing to look at is what distribution of ages it looks like they have in their company. You want to see something that makes sense. A startup will have a lot of young people (typically) and an established company should have a good distribution of ages. </p>
<p>Those that I know that work in areas where job stability is not that great typically get a little higher wage. The company needs to hire and they take advantage of that. They work as much as they can (and really like paid overtime) and stash some of their salary away for when they do get laid off. Not a career style that would make me comfortable but they do well at it.</p>
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<p>While the aerospace, nuclear, and petroleum industries hire many kinds of engineers, aerospace, nuclear, and petroleum engineers have a much more limited set of industries hiring them for those skills than engineers in more generally-applicable areas like chemical, electrical, and mechanical engineering.</p>
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<p>I think “much more limited” is a bit of an exaggeration with regards to aerospace engineering. At a fundamental level, aerospace engineering is based in mechanical engineering, and most companies are aware of this. Thermodynamics, Vibrations, Statics/Dynamics, Numerical Analysis, Structures, Fluids, Materials Science, Electrical Engineering… these are core areas which are shared between both Mechanical and Aerospace engineering. Many schools even combine the two degrees into one department. </p>
<p>As such, you will see many job postings with degree requirements stating “Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering Degree”, or even just “Engineering degree”. I’ve also seen some specifically requiring “Aerospace” or “Mechanical” engineering degrees, but these appear to be less common, and I would imagine the ratio of available aerospace engineers to “aerospace engineering” jobs is similar to the ratio of available mechanical engineers to “mechanical engineering jobs”.</p>
<p>Computer science > depends on location.</p>
<p>Does your local area produce transistors? plastics? military hardware? financial services?</p>
<p>Depending on the answer to that, the best major varies. Programmers are needed just about everywhere right now though.</p>
<p>Automotive, very cyclical and nearing a bubble that will pop soon, too many cars being produced and not enough buyers.</p>