The key facts

  • Overall US employment will grow 3.5% in 2025–2035; engineering fields will grow more than twice as fast
  • Fastest growth: industrial engineering — 12%, mechanical — 11%, electrical — 10%
  • Growth percentage is not the number of openings: 6% in architectural engineering is ~24,500 jobs, 7% in agricultural engineering is only ~100

Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast

According to estimates by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), overall employment in the country will grow by 3.5% in the 2025–2035 period. Employment growth in engineering occupations is forecast to be more than twice that rate. The projections are published amid widespread discussion of artificial intelligence's impact on the labor market, and, according to BLS, the number of jobs in a number of engineering fields is expected to increase.

Fields with the fastest growth

Expected job growth by field: industrial engineering — 12%; mechanical engineering — 11%; electrical engineering — 10%; computer hardware engineering — 9%; aerospace engineering — 8%; bioengineering — 8%; materials science — 8%; agricultural engineering — 7%; architectural engineering — 6%.

Growth percentage is not the number of openings

A high percentage growth does not always mean a large number of new jobs — the result depends on how many specialists are already employed in the field. Thus, 6% growth in architectural engineering corresponds to roughly 24,500 new jobs, whereas 7% growth in agricultural engineering amounts to only about 100 additional openings.

Context and limitations of the forecast

One of the fastest-growing fields in the overall labor market, according to the forecast, will be healthcare support occupations: employment there is expected to grow by 13.3%. The figures cited concern only the US labor market and reflect net job growth in 2025–2035; they do not indicate demand in other countries and are not a guarantee of employment in a specific occupation.