Speaker 1: 75% of engineering graduates end up ditching engineering right after graduation. What's up everyone, it's Oliver. Today I'm going to be talking about why so many engineering graduates don't end up working in engineering. If you've ever been on the dark web of engineering, you've probably seen a statistic just like this one many times before. But why is it that so many engineers don't end up working in their field of study? Well, there are a few common explanations for this. One of the common ones you might hear from students is that they can't find a job in their field. But if you were to go to the employers and ask them if they have job openings, they would often say that they have a hard time filling these spaces. So there is clearly a disconnect between the way that engineers are looking for jobs and the way that employers are hiring for jobs. However, I'm sure you can figure out that this tiny discrepancy isn't enough to cover a gap of 75%. So the next logical step would be to say, are we graduating too many engineers? And the quick answer to this is no, but also yes. According to this page from NewYorkFed.gov, engineers only see an unemployment rate from 2-4% so they are finding jobs. However, if you look in the second column, you'll see that 20-30% of engineers are underemployed. Being underemployed means that you're working a job that does not require a bachelor's degree at all. However, this isn't just an engineering problem. If you look across the United States and Canada, there are tons of people that are underemployed with a recent statistic pegging it at about 40% of people with bachelor's degrees. Okay, so that's a pretty crazy number. I'm going to come back to it in a minute, but first, let me tell you about my sponsor. Ha, just kidding, I don't have a sponsor. But if you're interested and you want to sponsor me, shoot me an email, OliverFootBusiness at gmail.com. Now, the fact that 20-30% of engineers are underemployed is pretty bad, but that's not the end of the problems. As I said at the beginning, 75% of engineers are not employed in engineering, leaving 25% who are actually employed in engineering. This means that 50% of engineers who are employed are working decent jobs, but not engineering. Now, for them, this might not be such a bad thing, because maybe they wanted to work in a different field, or they found a job that really interests them. This raises a problem, because people with degrees other than engineering are starting to get displaced by engineers. This is a multi-layered problem, and I'm not going to tell you to not get an engineering degree, but I am going to tell you to think about something other than university. That being said, if you're dead set on university, engineering and any other STEM field are still by far your best shot at actually getting employed within a decent job after you graduate. But if you're borderline on engineering and you're not super interested, maybe think about doing something like a trade school and then taking a few university courses that interest you. You'll avoid debt, and you might actually get a shot at getting a job in your field. So, as these statistics mention, if you're an engineering student, prepare to be disappointed. The Ontario Society of Professional Engineers did a survey asking fourth-year engineering students where they intended to work after graduation. As you can see, 92% of respondents said that they would probably or definitely be working in engineering. But as we already know from looking at the statistics, only 25% of these hopeful graduates actually ended up in their field. I'm not going to lie, this is honestly making me quite sad, and I don't know who's to blame here. Could it be that universities are not providing engineering students with the skills that employers want to see? Is it the fact that employers are unwilling to spend money and time to train new graduates? Is the economy simply not producing enough engineering jobs? Or are we just simply printing too many degrees and the rate of job creation can't keep up with it? I think that it's a mix of all of these factors, but I'm inclined to think that the biggest proponent is that there are too many engineering degrees. And when you think about this from a financial standpoint, it doesn't really make much sense, because an engineering degree, even in Canada, costs you about $100,000. So when you think of this from a national or even a provincial perspective, why on earth are we investing so much in the most expensive degrees that we can when the demand simply isn't there? Engineering degrees are notoriously the most expensive degrees, and we're pumping so many students through these programs? For what? If you were to tell me there was a 25% chance I would actually end up working in engineering, I don't know, maybe I would have rethought doing this engineering degree. Or, at the very least, I would have spent some more time really thinking about what it was I wanted to do. Another common topic that I saw come up, and something I personally believe, is that a lot of people do an engineering degree for the wrong reasons. They might see the nice salary, they might be pushed by their families, or maybe they just want to have the degree for the prestige. Whatever it is, a lot of students will end up dropping a degree if they're in it for the wrong reasons, and on top of that, those that do stick it out only have a 25% chance of getting a job in their field. And, to make things worse, you have a 25% chance of making your $100,000 investment completely worthless by being underemployed. This stuff is honestly insane, and it's making me go kinda crazy just talking about it. Alright, look, when I first started my degree, I had the genuine belief that I would be able to work in engineering no problem. I went to university with the goal of becoming an engineer. However, I'm also super interested in other things like finance, creative arts, music, and all of these things I can only call my hobbies right now. But, the more and more that I research, the more I start to question why I would put myself through hell for such an uncertain future. I guess, in some ways, you can look at me and call me part of the problem, because I'm probably gonna be one of those engineers who don't end up working in engineering. I battle with myself constantly about whether I should be in engineering, and I can't be the only one. I'm sorry that this video turned into a mid-degree crisis. I'll try and save it for a later one. So then, this brings me to my next point. Why on earth are we pushing people into these degrees if we know that none of them are gonna end up working in engineering? To try and answer my own question here, engineering is a great degree for any job. Even though engineers do have a 20% to 30% underemployment rate, this is still the lowest underemployment rate of almost any bachelor's degree. Alright, so I was listening to this, and I got really confused, because why is underemployment the bar? Shouldn't it be something higher? This shows that there is a huge imbalance between what we're pushing students to go and get, versus what jobs are actually out there. This means that overall, engineering is still one of the most highly valued degrees. So ironically, even though there are so many engineering specializations, engineering now has kind of become the general smart person degree. If you're good at math and physics, the next obvious step is to go and get an engineering degree. So I still think that engineering degrees have a lot of merit, but I don't think that's the only thing we should be telling smart people to go and do. This really is a national crisis across North America, and I am going to recommend you stay away from university if you're going for the wrong reasons. I really think that the mindset behind trade schools and more untraditional careers needs to start shifting. These are going to be the careers of the future that provide good jobs, and they already provide really good salaries. And you get the added side benefit of not having to sit in front of a computer 24 hours a day. This video is kind of just a PSA for you to think really hard about what it is that you want to do. Even if you're doing something right now that you feel like you can't switch out of, it's always good to reevaluate your situation and think about your motives. So with that being said, thank you so much for watching this video. It was kind of short, and I'm planning on making a full-length video much longer than this one about this topic on my second channel called Footsteps, so go subscribe there. If you enjoyed the video, be sure to leave a like and subscribe to this channel. I try to post a new video every single week. Let me know your thoughts down in the comments down below, and I will catch you in the next video. Bye.