Earlier this spring, as furloughs and layoffs due to the COVID-19 pandemic hit, even packaging professionals felt the sting (see “COVID-19 ‘Disruption’ in Packaging Jobs Worsens”). That could explain why our article from three summers ago, “10 hottest careers in the consumer packaging industry,” has vaulted into the top five best-read articles of 2020 so far.

When it comes to the current market for packaging jobs, there’s good news and bad news.

Bad news first: It’s an uncertain economy and, with so many people looking for work, competition for jobs is fierce.

Now the good news: A search for open “packaging engineer” positions returns remarkable results, as of July 15, 2020.

• On Glassdoor, more than 25,000 jobs for packaging engineer were posted in the last 30 days.

• A search on Monster pulls up 9,280 options from the last month.

• LinkedIn delivers 873 results in the same time frame.

• And Indeed lists 827 jobs for packaging engineer for just the last 14 days.

From these four sources, we’ve highlighted various openings around the country, within different markets, and with a range of salary levels.