Less than half of Australia’s recent engineering graduates are working in their field, but most of them are likely to work in highly skilled and highly paid jobs, new Deakin University research has found.
The research from Deakin’s Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment complements data from Graduate Careers Australia which shows that an engineering graduate is more likely to find paid employment than the average Australian graduate.
The Deakin research found that 46 per cent of graduates aged 20-24, who had gained an engineering undergraduate degree, were working in a professional engineering role, while that number fell to 32 per cent when including Australia’s engineering bachelor graduates across all age ranges.
Lead researcher Associate Professor Stuart Palmer said the research team analysed data from the most recent Australian Census, which occurred in 2011, in which more than 200,000 respondents reported a bachelor-level professional engineering qualification.
He said the study, 'The relationship between engineering bachelor qualifications and occupational status in Australia', published recently in the Australasian Journal of Engineering Education, was an important tool to help guide universities and governments make policy decisions.
Associate Professor Palmer said the data showed that many engineering graduates worked in highly-skilled and well-paid industries.
“This demonstrates that investment in engineering education was a sensible and efficient investment of resources,” Palmer said.
“The last Census occurred when the Australian economy had only begun to recover from the global financial crisis, so the good 2011 employment outcomes for engineering graduates shows that universities are educating highly employable graduates.
“Our study shows that an engineering degree is a valuable qualification to have in a wide range of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) industries, as well as many non-STEM industries.
“This is further supported by a separate analysis of the 2011 graduate outcomes published by Graduate Careers Australia, which showed 80 per cent of bachelor-qualified engineering graduates reported being in some form of work, compared to 70 per cent for graduates across all disciplines.
“We already know that an engineering degree is a valuable qualification to have for a whole range of jobs, particularly in high-tech fields and it wasn’t a surprise that our study found more than 14 per cent of all engineering bachelor graduates were working in the IT and other technology-related industries outside of engineering.”
Palmer said traditionally, many engineers took on management roles within engineering, and Deakin’s research found that more than 12 per cent of engineering bachelor graduates also found a general management role outside of engineering.
“We also found 10 per cent of engineering graduates were working in general, non-professional roles, while other fields in which graduates ended up working in included marketing, construction, finance, science, education and health," he said.
“Engineers have high level maths skills, and it is those skills, combined with technology, analysis and design expertise, which can make them prized recruits in the commerce and finance fields."
Findings were similar in the United Kingdom and United States.
“In the UK, the idea that engineering and other STEM graduates can work outside of their primary field is actually promoted, but that’s not something that is commonly done in Australia, which is a shame,” he said.
Hays Recruitment said engineers are in high demand and this is likely to continue throughout 2016. This is particularly true for design engineers, project engineers and drafters.
Hays Engineering senior regional director, Adam Shapley, said senior structural engineers are in extremely high demand in Australia right across the consultancy sector.
“Despite the shortage of candidates in many areas, employers are not in a position to pay top end salaries to attract talent because they have to reduce their profit margin when bidding on work in order to win contracts,” Shapley said.
"Over the January to March quarter we expect Ecologically Sustainable Design (ESD) Consultants to be in increasing demand given the much better conditions for the renewable energy sector."