Abstract-“Will Mechanical Engineers or any other engineers be able to find good paying jobs in the future?” This is an often asked question and sometimes difficult to answer. There are many aspects that must be looked at to answer that question, however, let us look only at whether there will be job availabilities in the near future. Jobs that were readily available for engineers have been moved out of the towns and even out of the country. Many companies have moved their businesses to India and other foreign countries. They build new plants and employ the people of that country. How has this affected the job market for the engineers and how will it affect the economy in the future?
Index Terms- Outsourcing, Off-shoring, Nanotechnology, Mechanical Engineering.
Outsourcing has been a trend for quite a while now. Employers have decided that it is more profitable for them to move their plants to other countries. They can pay engineers in India or other foreign countries far less than what they can pay an American engineer. Even when you add on the cost of building the new plant and shipping the products back to America, they still believe that it is more profitable to offshore their companies. What they don’t take into account is what it does to the economy and how that will affect them in the future. If the American people don’t have jobs, how will they be able to buy the products that the companies overseas are making.
Of course there is the loss of jobs in America due to off-shoring, but what else is bad about it? If an engineer in India is working on your project, you lose the some of the communication that you could have with a local engineer. If there was something that needed to be discussed, you could meet a lot easier than you can if he is across the world. Many companies like the fact that the people they are working with are local and dependable. Because of outsourcing and off-shoring, a lot of companies lose this important aspect of the working environment.
“Outsourcing and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs are trends that have been noticed by students” Companies are not going out and recruiting and their hiring is very selective. Students who have just graduated have found that there are not enough job openings for everyone to get a job. It is a hard time for all of the engineers, and especially the Mechanical Engineers. The typical jobs that were once there for them are not there anymore. They will have to use there knowledge in a field that might not be what they expected, such as Nanotechnology.)
The has been some evidence that the engineering Job Market is on the incline. This is a good thing for the engineering students who are hoping to find a good paying job in the next few years, however, they will still have to put in a lot of work to find it. There will be some jobs, but not necessarily the jobs that the students are looking for. A lot of the old jobs have disappeared but new jobs such as Nanotechnology are on an uprise and will employ many engineers in the future. Not all of the engineers just starting out will find the jobs, however the creative and skilled ones should find a job with a little effort. There is also some evidence that the starting wages for engineers. Mechanical Engineers specifically are up about five hundred dollars. See table
| Year | Computer Engineering | Electrical Engineering | Industrial Engineering | Mechanical Engineering |
| 2000 | $50,182 | $48,613 | $45,988 | $45,952 |
| 2001 | $53,653 | $52,092 | $50,092 | $48,588 |
| 2002 | $51,135 | $50,391 | $50,391 | $48,282 |
| 2003 | $51,343 | $49,794 | $49,794 | $48,585 |
| 2004 | $52,573 | $50,761 | $50,761 | $49,056 |