Why Civil Engineering Employment Has Not Recovered

There are really two reasons, nay three:

The recession

Senior engineers holding onto their jobs longer, and

Recent graduates who have not been able to find work for 5 years

Survey of Graduate Civil Engineers Unemployment

A study conducted during 11/16 — 11/30 evaluated the number and quality of civil engineering applicants based on their educational level, EIT, and whether they had any experience (internship or other experience outside of the university). Of the applicants that applied for the job posting, 48% were rated as “not qualified” due to their living too far away from the job location. Of the remaining applicants, the groups, in order of size were as follows: EIT with experience no MS (38%), experience only (24%), MS with experience, no EIT (19%), MS, experience, and EIT (14%), and those having EIT only with no experience or MS (5%).

Obama needs to eat his spinach

 

I didn’t think he was going to win back in 2008. A black President? No way, I thought. America is too racist to elect a black President; and what kind of name is “Barack Obama”? But after he was elected I really did have a glimmer of hope that things were going to be different. I had flashbacks to the Ross Perot days when I thought voting for president really mattered. “Bully Pulpit,” I thought. Then came disappointment.

Keep this in mind–I’ve been a Democrat for as long as I can remember. Here is my voting record for the entire time I’ve been voting:

2008: Obama

2004: Kerry

2000: Gore

1996: Clinton

1992: Perot

And I don’t think I’ve ever voted for a Republican in a local or state election.

 

(Remember this building?)

If you remember back in 1992, Ross Perot kept talking about this “Bully Pulpit” idea. The idea is simple: you use your position as President to take your case to the American people. What the problems the Country faces are, what needs to be done, and who is holding us up. Then, hopefully, those guys will cooperate under the pressure. But Obama doesn’t seem to have the type of personality that works — he’s more of a statesman than a bully.

Astronomy is Wicked Cool

 

(Stars orbiting around a Black Hole at the center of our Galaxy)

This animation is just freakin awesome. The purple orbit is traced by “SO-102”, which takes something like 11 years or so to complete a full orbit.

That star has to be really moving along. I’d like to find out how fast these stars are going and how far away from the black hole they are.

 

(Check out how many stars orbit around the one point (that you can’t see))

I should have been an astronomer!

What’s wrong with you California?

It’s October 2nd, it’s 100 degrees outside at 5:00 PM.

What’s wrong with you California?

Moonrise Kingdom — Movie Review

 

There’s something about tweens in love that is awkward–probably why the writers/producers did their best to portray the relationship between Suzy and Sam as something non-serious to the point of being non-dangerous. There are some important messages in the film that will be lost on the people that most need it, but they are there. The film is mainly comedy, and there are many very good and renowned actors in the film. I wanted to care about the characters, but in the end the comic nature of the film took the edge off of my concern. It’s not a tear-jerker in that sense. I got a kick out of “Social Services” — a woman who enters the film representing what can only be a poke at government bureaucracy. Don’t expect much character development in this–there are too many sub-plots and there is not enough time.

Thumbs up.

I don’t like math, but neither do economists or bankers.

All the hubbub about the unemployment rate recently has gotten under my skin. Various mainstream, credible rags (electronic and in print) report “dismal” jobs numbers, but what is the truth in this? Let’s put things in a little perspective, going back to April. That month we saw an increase in 68,000 jobs, as compared with the 96,000 created for August. Here are the numbers for the months in-between:

April – 68,000
May – 87,000
June – 45,000
July – 141,000
August – 96,000

Sure, we didn’t create as many jobs as July, but are the numbers really so dismal. Take a look at the numbers from the past several years, including the recession:

 

At first glance you should notice that we have been creating jobs rather than losing them since March of 2010, and since then there have been several worse months than August 2012. Don’t get me wrong, the 8.1% unemployment rate is nothing to scoff at, but things are getting better, just not as quickly as we would like.

Here is my solution, not that anyone in the White House or Congress would seriously consider it: the US spends a HUGE amount of money on our military

 

Take this down to China levels, say 150 Billion, and spend 550 Billion on a very large public works program, rebuilding bridges, roads, schools (not including universities), and electric rail systems. Isn’t this more of what the country actually needs? I can think of other things to fund too: students (loan forgiveness), alternate energy investments, science grants, technical training programs. The list goes on.

Sticking to your guns

Sometimes it’s tempting to forget about your own reasons for starting along a course of action. You thought it was the right thing to do, but lately other people’s attitudes may be affecting your judgment.

“Why do you want to make a mountain out of a molehill?”

Then you start to think, “Yeah, maybe I’m making too big a deal out of this.” But maybe not. Particularly if the one saying this is the person directly affected by your decision. Sometimes, you have to have some intestinal fortitude to see yourself through a difficult decision. What did you think, that you were going to decide on a course of action that negatively affects people (whether it’s just or not) and they weren’t going to try and convince you that you made the wrong choice?

Be tough. Let your reason for changing your mind be your own and not someone else’s. 

Some advantages to writing things down

We can divide, crudely, all of our actions into two categories. One, those actions that spring from our instincts, hearts, and knees. The other those actions that require a bit of short term memory, guided by drawing symbols, whether those symbols be letters or parts of a flowchart diagram.

Chess seems to be one of those games where players can develop a complicated plan without writing anything down, but they have memorized the rules of the game and heuristic aids. Combinations are stored in the short term memory, whereas the larger plan is not. I think this is what makes chess such a great game–it deprives us of the advantage of writing down alternatives and we have to rely on more abstract manners of thinking to maintain the bigger picture.

But in real life–the one where we plan events that affect our lives and other’s lives–the benefit of writing things down goes a long way. It’s not as exciting, going on a long trek on the Appalachian Trail on a whim without any preparation is the stuff of fairy tales, but a small amount of planning would make the trip much more enjoyable in the long run.

Overeducated, overskilled, not enough experience.

The jobs recession is a largely unpublished phenomenon. We really only get one number thrown at us repeatedly–the “unemployment rate” number. That number (U3 published by the BLS) is currently 8.2% But there is another number, U6, which is at 14.9% What do these numbers mean?

 

The U3 number is a percentage of the labor force that have actively performed a job search over the past 4 weeks. The U6 number are the U3s plus “discouraged workers“, “marginally attached workers”, and part-time workers looking for full-time work. The discouraged and marginally attached workers seem to be people that have given up but still would like a full-time job. For whatever reason they have not been actively looking for work in the previous 4 weeks.

Recent graduates need not apply

The problem facing recent graduates is that they have to compete with people that already have experience. When I graduated two years ago (in Civil Engineering), there were very few jobs available. I believe I got two or three interviews out of dozens of applications and inquiries. I had already obtained two years of experience doing engineering work and another two years working with computers as a technician. I had excellent references. Still, almost all of the jobs I saw advertised were looking for someone with at least 5 years of experience.

This situation isn’t going away. I’m employed now but have been looking for other work for some months, partly, because I want to succeed as an engineer and to do that requires working with other engineers. There are none where I work. So now I have a little experience, but not close to the 5 years of non-internship experience that employers are looking for. What’s more, employers seem to be looking for candidates that have very specific experience. For example, if the ad is for a land development firm, the company typically wants someone with 5 years of land development experience, probably working for another, very similar firm.

On the upside, I have networked towards potential jobs with a very good company, and have started to network more within the engineering community. With any luck the unemployment situation will continue to get better and construction and engineering jobs will start to come back. In closing, I would just like to express my sympathies for all of you out there looking for work, especially the skilled, educated, and fresh out of school. You deserve better, and I’m sorry that in this land of plenty you will have to wait until the fat cats up on Capitol Hill decide that doing something for the good of the Country is more important than politics.