The 10 Hardest Jobs To Fill In America
Employers have a hard time filling jobs for engineers and nurses.
June 6, 2009— -- For the second year in a row, engineer is the hardest job to fill in America. Why are engineers so hard to find? "We have whole generations of people loving liberal arts, not going into science and math," says Larry Jacobson, executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers.
Other professions on the staffing firm Manpower's list of the 10 hardest jobs to fill in the U.S.: information technology staffer, nurse, machinist and teacher. The survey of 2,019 employers was done in the first quarter of 2009.
It might be hard to believe that any employer is struggling to fill positions, since the unemployment rate reached 8.9% in April, up from 5% a year before. But the Manpower survey found that employers are having a very hard time filling jobs for skilled workers in specific niches. "The overall unemployment rate is a killer," says Jonas Prising, Manpower's president for the Americas. "To see something better, you have to look at specific jobs."
It is definitely an employers' market, broadly speaking. In 2006, 44% of U.S. employers surveyed reported having a hard time filling jobs; this year, only 19% did. Still, Jacobson anticipates a shortage of engineers into the foreseeable future.
There are several reasons. First, the federal stimulus program is hastening the rebuilding of America's highways, bridges and tunnels, and the refitting of buildings to be more sustainable, which is making the demand for engineers soar. Also, the demand for new sustainable energy sources such as wind farms is increasing too. Meanwhile, the profession's most experienced workers are retiring in droves.
"Companies are looking to replace more than half of their engineers over the next eight years, because baby boomers are retiring," Jacobson says. "When you have 80,000 engineers working for you, as Lockheed Martin does, that's a lot of jobs." He says that even if every single seat in the nation's engineering schools is filled, that's only 75,000 engineers being trained annually.
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