Engineers are broken into several disciplines, typically by prepending a descriptor to “Engineer” that describes a broad category of things that they make that gives humans superpowers. Example: Electrical Engineers use electronics to give people super powers.
Note: There are many more specialties than presented in this section. This list was decided as you can find most of these engineering majors at most large universities:
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has excellent information on these careers. They describe what they do, job outlook, pay, area information, and more. You can find a list of all the tracked engineering careers on the BLS website here. In addition to those careers, you should pursue the BLS site and look at other careers and options. You might be surprised what is growing fastest! From the provided link, if you click on the individual occupation links, you will see information on salary, job outlook (aka job predicted growth), degree needed, etc. The job outlook will provide you with a % predicted growth. Use that % and see if you can determine the rank from highest to lowest predicted growth.
Based on the following activity you may think to yourself “Ah, I should switch my major to the career growing the fastest!” Not so fast. Part of being a good engineer is learning how to analyze and interpret information. For example: you can see civil engineers are projected to grow 6% which lead to over 22,0000 new jobs between 2023 and 2033, where computer hardware engineers shows a higher rate at 7%, but this is actually a lower amount of new jobs as it leads to just over 6,000 new jobs. I would also like to add that you shouldn’t feel the need to switch engineering majors just to have the highest number of jobs because if you look at all these engineering majors, you can see that there is a projected growth and that there are many jobs available to you when you graduate.
Finally, spend some time perusing the BLS page for your chosen major or field you would like to go into. Click around on all the tabs. Looks at where they are employed, what they do, how much they are paid, etc. Then take some time to reflect.
What engineering major are you currently enrolled in? What does the BLS say they do? What type of thing do they make? Are you interested in making that thing? Make sure to write in your own words, plagiarism is not OK!
