Where are all of the Power Engineers?

If you have an open Power Delivery Engineering position and you just can’t fill it, you may be thinking, “Where are all the Engineers?”

We are seeing this across the industry for a few reasons. First, there are simply fewer students studying engineering in recent years, both in the United States and in Western European countries. Potential personnel are drawn to the tech sector and other industries.

Second, the boomer generation – they are retiring.
Each year, millions of Baby Boomers retire from the labor force, with a good percentage leaving the engineering fields. According to a Pew Research report, about 28.6 million Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, reported that they were out of the labor force due to retirement in the third quarter of 2020. Over the next 19 years, 10,000 Baby Boomers will become 65 years old every day, the nominal retirement age among engineers and other professions. Of course, engineers will represent a small percentage out of those 10,000, but those numbers could create a huge impact on the number of employed engineers over the next decade. The number of retirees may have accelerated over the last year due to the pandemic. The Pew report states that since February of 2020, the number of retirees increased to around 1.8 million.
Entry-level and Senior Engineers are now able to demand top salaries in the current market since they are in such demand.

In order to attract and fill these positions companies have to be willing to either train people or pay top dollar.

If you have a rock star power engineer I suggest you do everything you can to retain that employee.