[RightWhale]

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?

[Ciexyz]

My Dad was a mechanical engineer who got his training at Penn State during the 40's. That was my family's ticket to the middle class. But after many years of employment, he ended up with a small pension from one company, and was laid off six months short of qualifying for a second pension (he had nine years and six months, you needed ten years to qualify for a pension at that period of time--law changed later to five years.)

He never bounced back after that action by his company. Of course you can't win thru EEO, the deck is stacked against the person who files an age discrimination complaint.

I hope the a**holes at his company who did that to him get their just rewards when they stand before the Pearly Gates.

[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.

[redgolum]

Anything that is manufactured, processed, or otherwise handled in an industrial sense has an engineer involved.

I am a chemical engineer with a focus on process engineering and process management. We tend to do a lot of odd and interesting things.