Despite the current economic gloom, engineering jobs are on the rise. Here we will look at some of the recent developments in engineering and how they are impacting on the jobs market.
If you are an engineer looking for interesting job opportunities a good place to have been recently is the Farnborough Air Show. According to Boeing, over the next two decades the number of civil aeroplanes in the skies is set to double; and that is despite peak oil. They are anticipating that there will be 34,000 new jetliners creating a $4.5 trillion market. That means a lot of new jobs in aero engineering.
The construction of several new nuclear power stations in the UK is receiving new backing despite the public adversity. The first is likely to be at Thornbury and it is likely to be financed by an international consortium. According to the IoD, nuclear is the only realistic way of providing cost effective safe energy and will cut greenhouse gas emissions by between 10 and 20 times. In terms of cost, it is half that of wind power and significantly cheaper than both gas and coal. The proposed programme will create many new jobs in engineering and nuclear engineering.
The number of IT and engineering jobs in London has been boosted by concerns over the stability and security of banking systems. This was highlighted by the collapse of the RBS banking system recently and has resulted in a significant increase in demand for highly qualified professionals. It seems that there is now pressure from the various boardrooms to reverse previous policies of sourcing much of their IT support overseas and instead bringing it back in-house; no doubt many IT specialists will be savouring the flavour of a little schaden freud.
Big data continues to provide new job opportunities as data sizes begin to exceed many petabytes per data set. With 2.5 quintillion bytes of data being generated every day, it is staggering to consider that 90% of all data has been generated in just the last two years. Many consider this to be the new frontier of computing and that it is creating unprecedented challenges and opportunities that impacts many different sectors and businesses including healthcare, the public sector, retail, manufacturing, and meteorology.
The development of apps for mobile devices continues to be a booming area and developers with experience in modern development tools such as Xcode along with HTML5 are in high demand and consequently are demanding high salaries. Engineering jobs for Android and iOS developers in the UK have increased by 25% since the start of 2012. Around 40% of new start-ups in the US are seeking cross-platform app developers and similar trends are being seen in the UK.
Demand for contractors in the engineering and IT sectors is buoyant. Over the last year the number of contracting opportunities for engineers has risen by around 20% and that for IT professionals has risen by 10%. Many of these new jobs are based in the Midlands due to the regional expansion of engineering.
This article was submitted by Anthony Davies, who is passionate about the job market, the UK economy and human resources.