[thefro526]

I haven't really had the time to read this thread extensively but it sounds like it's a very interesting discussion.

Just to comment on the original post, there's an extremely high demand for Engineers across the US and even the world. I have seen it in my own workplace where I was hired out of high school to work alongside Professional Engineers. They were in need of help so bad that they looked outside of traditional channels where they found me and saw if I would be up to the task.

It's really funny to work alongside engineers at such a young age because many of them are a lot older than I am - I've noticed that as a whole it seems like many of the Engineers I work with from outside companies are usually well into their 50's and 60's and they come from a different era of thinking and have skill sets that aren't taught today. Also, many of these engineers have the intent on retiring soon but they can't find suitable replacements. We're actually having this problem at my Job, where we're looking for a new supervisor for our engineering department and we're struggling to find someone who is qualified in terms of experience and education.

So the demand is still there, and I really don't foresee it going away anytime soon.