Replies

Yes I did see it. Have you seen the placement stats for undergrad engineers? The market is very saturated, and while starting wages are high, the jobs aren't there. I work with 8 fellow chemical engineers, and all are working below that $55k supposed starting wage. Most of my classmates in college are also below that.

As to getting more educated, you are right. But for many engineering disciplines a masters won't help you and a PhD can work against you. Most engineers that go for higher ed go to an MBA (as am I), but typically they stop being engineers.

My point was for a high school senior today, I would not recommend engineering. If they can hack it, law would be a better shot. The jobs are just not there right now.

In chemical engineering, there has been little job growth since the early 90's. The new hires today are replacing the retiree's from yesterday for the most part. This might pick up in the years ahead, but face it, if you don't have an industrial base you don't need engineers.

Not necessarily. If you have 5 extremely qualified and productive guys for 1 position the salary might get very low, at or below the subsistence level.

That's right. Did you miss the part of that same post where I said the price of labor is determined by supply and demand? My point is that demand is in large part affected by the productivity of a given person's labor. The four least productive of those guys are going to transfer their qualifications to another job. They're quite unlikely to remain unemployed just so they can spite their guy who did get hired into accepting below subsistence wages.

The number of jobs for a particular product or service is limited by the demand of the market for the product or service. However, jobs as a whole are not a scarce resource. Human demands for things are unlimited; jobs as a whole are only limited by productivity in high demand production allowing excess labor to be profitably diverted to other products.