<p>I have found the following numbers from Bureau of Labor Statistics:</p>
<p>The distribution of employment by engineering specialty
Civil engineers 256,000
Mechanical engineers 227,000
Industrial engineers 201,000
Electrical engineers 153,000</p>
<p>Both of them have large needs and ranked 2nd and 3rd along with Civil 1st.
What I am confusing is that only a few colleges provide IE course, and there are much more ME coures than IE’s, and also much more ME students in every schools. Why more needs of Industrial engineers but few students study?</p>
<p>“Need” isn’t just a matter of how many positions exist. We need janitors too, and there are probably more janitorial positions than engineering ones, but since the supply is so large, the pay is less.</p>
<p>What major people choose depends on their interests and their own perception (which may be based on good or bad information) of what the pay is like and what sorts of jobs are available.</p>
<p>My guess would be that many people think industrial engineering is becoming less important in this country due to labor-intensive manufacturing being moved overseas, and thus capital-intensive manufacturing being more important (iow, a fancy name for electrical, computer, and chemical engineering type jobs).</p>
<p>Payscale.com shows that IEs get less money in respect to their years on the job than mechanical engineers. Possibly because there are so many more IEs (larger supply means a lower price, all other factors aside).</p>
<p>I hear that one reason is because engineers of all types can find themselves doing IE-like work. Another would be, as Tom said, the shift from manufacturing jobs to service jobs is scaring people away from what is thought to be a manufacturing-focused field. Computers, biotech, and others all seem to be growing while manufacturing is shifting overseas, or at least to the southern US where they can pay less and avoid unions (just as an example, Boeing seems to be gearing up to build its next factory in South Carolina instead of opening a second line in Puget Sound).</p>
<p>That said, the BLS says the need for IEs is actually going up.</p>
<p>First, I would be highly skeptical of those BLS numbers - I would wonder what exactly they are putting into the category of industrial engineers? More than likely they are counting any engineer who works in a industrial environment, which as we all know could be anything from a ChemE to an ME. The reason I say this is because just like your very astute observation that there are not very many schools with IE programs, and even at those programs, usually the IE dept is not nearly as large as some of the others. There is absolutely no way that the supply of IEs being graduated could ever even come close to filling that demand, not a chance in hell. Which leads me to my next point:</p>
<p>
[quote] Payscale.com shows that IEs get less money in respect to their years on the job than mechanical engineers.
</p>
<p>Yes, larger supply does mean a lower price. But here we have the opposite 201,000 is not the supply, it is the demand. The numbers of IEs being graduated to fill these slots is the supply. Last I checked, there were roughly only 25-30 IE programs in the entire country, which means there is no way this could happen. With a demand/supply ratio like that, IEs would be getting a premium and theyre not. I have a feeling that these numbers are just inherently incorrect for the type of IE we are accustomed to talking about.</p>
<p>Now, with respect to the general topic of the need of IEs:
I think that an engineering degree is mostly a cross functional degree these days. Sure, there are definitely exceptions to this, however, many large firms hire any number of disciplines to fill the same positions. At one of the largest companies in the world, ExxonMobil, they hire engineers and nearly everyone at the entire company has an engineering degree, yet they all work on cross functional basis. MEs and ChemEs can perform optimization, a typically IE related function, while IEs can work in typically ChemE or ME roles. </p>
<p>Manufacturing, like you say, has become more or less of a losing battle here in the states. However, I would say that IEs have just as much opportunity as most any other discipline. There are certainly companies who want classical IEs, just like there are many companies who want classical ChemEs but I would say that on average the lines separating classical discipline engineering have become more vague. If you get an engineering degree, you can pretty much leverage that into whatever kind of work interests you most.</p>
<p>I agree with Purduefrank. Moreover, in recent years, IE has undergone a sort of transformation from highly manufacturing focused to service-sector focused, (while still incorporating the fundamentals of manufacturing). </p>
<p>IE now covers supply chain optimization, decision-science in the service sector, finance, automated warehouse technology, health-care resource management, operations research, and a variety of logistics problems relevant to today’s challenges.</p>
<p>Also, like I’ve said before, IEs are more likely to get a job without “engineer” in the job title because their work focuses less on traditional engineering than other engineering degrees. Some might be bothered by this, others wont. And again, an IE degree is cross-functional, it’s up to you to leverage it in whatever domain is of interest to you.</p>
<p>Of all the IOE friends I know (small sample I know), more than half wants to get into management and technology consulting where they could use their personal skills and optimization stuff. A significant number wants to get into somewhat quantitative trading which emphasizes probability and stochastic stuff. About 25% wants to get into operations management type. Only a few wants to be in manufacturing and ergonomics but those are somewhat rare. So I dont think the outsourcing of manufacturing makes a big difference anyway. This is also the general vibe I got in the IOE department.</p>
<p>A friend of mine has a chemical engineering education but is now doing as much industrial engineering as chemical engineering where she’s working. How? Learning on the job.</p>
<p>“Yes, larger supply does mean a lower price. But here we have the opposite – 201,000 is not the supply, it is the demand. The numbers of IE’s being graduated to fill these slots is the supply. Last I checked, there were roughly only 25-30 IE programs in the entire country, which means there is no way this could happen. With a demand/supply ratio like that, IE’s would be getting a premium – and they’re not. I have a feeling that these numbers are just inherently incorrect for the type of IE we are accustomed to talking about.”</p>
<p>Excuse me while I go into pedantic econ nerd mode:</p>
<p>Actually that 201,000 reflects both supply and demand as well as wages, not just one or t’other. Industry demands 201,000 IEs for a given average pay and engineers demand a given average pay for 201,000 IEs. :-)</p>
<p>The fact that many engineers can be IEs only enlarges the supply of potential IEs, which, as I’ve said, decrease their price (ceteris paribus).</p>
<p>Any conversation about the supply and demand of IEs would have to fall back solely on the definition of an IE. Here we have some massively contaminated data. Just like you wouldnt ever want to count the number of accountants in the U.S. by looking at anybody who works in an accounting firm, or anybody who performs accounting functions at mom and pop businesses. Likewise, I really find it hard to have a conversation about the demand or supply of IEs when we are really talking about people who perform engineering work in an industrial setting. </p>
<p>I do think that you are correct in your statement that many other engineering disciplines offer substitutes for IE grads, however, the same thing can be said the other way around. Now, of course this isnt true in all cases but it is true in many cases. There are many companies who hire the gamut of engineering majors for the same positions.
To offer some of my own opinion on the matter:</p>
<p>Recently at the career fair here I witnessed some odd contradictions. Namely, that IEs had one of the longest lists of companies who were targeting them. This, in spite of the fact that ME, ChemE, Aero, Civil, EE, etc. all have a multitude more students in their respective programs. Now I guess you could argue that the companies only wanted to hire a few IEs, and that they were planning to hire many of the other disciplines but I somewhat doubt that. The crazy thing to me is that the list of companies targeting IEs was approx equal to the number of IEs that graduate/year. The same cannot even come close to being true in these other disciplines. So, for this reason I dont think that demand here is as big of an issue as you say it is. </p>
<p>On top of this, I think that the reason for discrepancies in the salaries over time is quite simple. It is almost expected that an IE only do traditional IE work for around 5 years after which time they go into more of a management role. In fact, I would say that youll have a seriously hard time finding an IE graduate doing IE work 10 years out it just isnt the norm. This isnt the case in many other fields. Hence, the IEs salary that is being measured as a function of time, is probably the salary of some IE who either enjoyed the more technical side of things and decided to forgo a higher paid move into management. Or, some person who just was a low performer and never given the chance to move into management. Either way, you are measuring the salary of what could be looked at as an underachiever.</p>
<p>The university our son is interested in lists “Industrial and Systems Engineering” as a major. Is this a new trend? From reading about the major, he seems more interested in the “Systems” aspect than the “Industrial” aspect. As someone who knows next to nothing about engineering, I would appreciate any insights or advice about choosing this major. Thank you!</p>