What’s the 2025 Outlook for Engineering Jobs?What’s the 2025 Outlook for Engineering Jobs?

All year we’ve been hearing—and reporting—that there’s been a shortage in skilled labor in manufacturing. While that may not be great news for manufacturers trying to be productive, it has given engineers steady career opportunities.

With recent tech layoffs and US President-Elect Donald Trump promising much change next year, engineers may be wondering whether the jobs outlook for 2025 will be as rosy as this year’s. We asked Scott Sargis, founder & president of Strategic Search Corporation, who shared his 2024 predictions with us nearly a year ago, what he expects in the coming year.

“2024 continued to be one with more engineering job openings than qualified engineers to fill them. Companies needed over one million engineers this year, but with ONLY 141,000 U.S. engineer graduates, there was a deficit of 825,000 engineers,”  he tells Design News.

“With President Trump winning an unprecedented 2^nd term, many pundits believe technology-based candidates and industries will benefit,” Sargis continues. “This will continue to mean engineering talent will be in high demand and short supply in 2025!”

What engineering skills will be in demand?

Throughout 2024, proficiency in artificial intelligence and machine learning as well as in data science and analysis have been sought-after skills, Sargis tells us. Next year will build on such demand.

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“Growing fields like the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics will continue to be in search of much more talent,” he says.

While he says many skills will be needed, he shares some that will stand out:

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Also, Elon Musk’s role in the new presidential administration is important to watch, Sargis says, as he could have some influence on the US job market, particularly his involvement along with Vivek Ramaswamy in the newly created Department of Government Efficiency.

“As the 1976 docudrama film, All the President's Men, popularized the phrase "Follow the money," I extrapolate this for the mantra, “Follow the Musk.” Elon Musk spent not only $130 million but also provided a lot of knowledge and effort to get President Trump elected. As a result, he carries a lot of technology weight in the new administration and will be a bellwether indicator of jobs and our economy in the near future,” Sargis says.

“Not only his businesses like Tesla, SpaceX, X (Twitter), and xAI, but also his role in the Trump administration will be indicators,” he continues. “The goal is to cut $2 trillion of waste from the budget (Caveat: last fiscal year’s budget was $6.76 trillion so this would have been 29.63% of the total.) This will mean Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen, and continuous improvement experts will be in high demand.”

Should working engineers consider going back to school or seeking new certifications?

Related:Career Advice for Engineers: Think Startups and Data/AI

When asked whether working engineers should seek more education, Sargis says, “yes, but not necessarily in a conventional way. Growing fields such as AI are changing so quickly that formal classes or degrees will often have a one-year lag time for relevancy. This means that by the time the curriculum for the class or degree becomes institutionalized, that class or degree will no longer be as relevant.”

Instead, engineers should consider “joining associations, symposiums, lectures, work groups, and online learning to acquire needed cutting-edge skills,” as they “will be a more robust way to learn them,” he says.

What about preparing future engineers?

Continuously strong demand for engineers is putting “a massive strain on our current STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education system, which needs a lot of improvement,” Sargis says. “Our current subpar educational infrastructure not only fails to churn out enough STEM talent, but also funnels many potential candidates into ineffectual degrees rather than into the science, engineering, math, or technical trades. 

“As a result, many companies have adopted their own internal STEM remediation programs to handle the gap in learning,” he says. “Therefore, STEM education needs to radically improve including becoming more fun and impactful to churn out more engineers in the future.”

What markets will be booming under Trump?

Sargis believes that construction and manufacturing will be “at the epicenter of President Trump’s focus.”

Construction will be important given the case that “Trump has a long history in real estate and construction, and it is dear to his heart,” Sargis says. Manufacturing will also be central because “one of Trump’s cornerstone promises is to bring manufacturing back to America and away from China.”

Additionally, AI, robotics, and IoT will continue to do very well, he says. “Finally, all the fields that Musk has been and will be tied will all do very well under President Trump, including space exploration, Internet 2.0, Web 3.0, autonomous vehicle (AV) connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) driverless cars, and Lean, Six Sigma and continuous improvement related markets,” he says.

Markets such as EVs and clean energy may not fare as well, however. “As part of Musk’s plan to work with the next Treasury secretary to cut out $2 trillion in waste, one area of focus will be repealing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which President Biden signed into law in 2022,” Sargis predicts. “IRA extended tax credits for electric vehicle purchases, renewable power, and hydrogen and nuclear energy. While the IRA tax credits have benefited Telsa, Musk has been very vocal in saying repealing IRA’s clean energy tax breaks could yield about $921 billion or almost 50% of the $2 trillion in cuts he seeks. This means that engineers in EV and clean energy should beware!”

Bottom line for all engineers—Follow the Musk

“Like I shared earlier, “Follow the Musk,” says Sargis. “Keep abreast of in-vogue technologies and skills related to him. Then sharpen your skills in those areas.”

Sargis also advises engineers to refine their interviewing skills. “Many engineers, scientists, and technology professionals lack relevant interview aptitudes,” he says. “That is why my firm developed the “Real Benefit Exercise” for our engineering candidates. We studied top salespeople to see what they were doing right in closing their deals. Then we isolated those behaviors that were easiest to replicate by our engineers during job interviews. We found that the best ones spoke in terms of benefits to the customer. In this case you should view your interviewer as your customer and what you have to offer is a solution to their needs. Please view this and apply for free.”