[indthkr]

"Outside of the defense industry and other gov't work such as NASA, what are the main fields of employment of engineers? Municipal power, construction, roads, oil/mining, what else?"

Those would be about the only relatively "safe" havens for engineers in the U.S., although I'm sure most DoD contractors would outsource everything they could legally get away with.

[RightWhale]

I was in EE a couple decades ago, and employment was a hot topic near the end of every schoolyear. It was determined that municipal power engineers had as good an income as electronics engineers, and a lot more certainty of continued employment. Tradeoff was lack of glamor. The mechanical engineers down the hall and the civil engineers probably had equally good chances of steady employment and income, but of course even less glamor. It's a tradeoff--food or fame. Tough choice.