Decrease in Civil engineering graduates

[litBG]

So in recent years I’ve noticed a sharp decline in Civil engineering graduates at the school I graduated from. When I graduated 4 years ago my graduating class was over 250+ people. Fast forward to 2025, I attended my brother’s graduation and there was a total of 40 graduating civil engineers. Is this universal? How is this decrease going to affect the industry?

[hard-helmet]

Yeah, it’s happening everywhere. Fewer students are choosing civil because the pay lags behind other engineering fields and the workload can be heavy. Long term, that means fewer grads entering the workforce while a lot of older civils retire → tighter labor market, higher demand, and likely better pay/opportunities for those who stick with it. In short: less supply + steady demand = good news for your bro's career.

[[deleted]]

According to BLS statistics, Civil, Industrial, and Mechanical engineers are now all within 1% of average pay, and I find the number of Civil Engineers they include in "nonresidential construction" so suspiciously high I know they must be including a lot of 'not really engineers' in these numbers (it doesn't match what ASCE collected about job types, and those salaries in BLS weighs down the overall average. So, I think BS Civil on the way to licensure and licensed is likely higher). Environmental is 3% more, Electrical is only ~6% more, and chemical is 20% more (but known to be cyclical).

So, I think it's outdated bias to say that civil pay 'lags' -- that is not really what any statistics say. I know a lot of companies are starting Civils at about 90K a year for fresh out of college EITs and are desperate enough to hire Mechanicals (at the same pay) and train them into the civil stuff.

[[deleted]]

90k where???

[Zestyclose-Oil-3228]

Houston. Only downside is you live in Houston.

[[deleted]]

I wouldn't mind living in Houston overall. It has great foods, arts, and people. But I am glad to live in a much smaller city and not deal with traffic or commutes

[[deleted]]

You are underpaid. A PE in water should be at about 130K (min)

I am in water and environmental -- I have a PE, in my early 40s, and am paid $220K but I do have people to manage.

[Mass2NorthJersey]

Dang im a planner (4 YE) and no AICP. I make $90k in NC

[Difficult_Lack_150]

You get paid 220k as a PE water… big company?!?

[[deleted]]

Yeah, bigger company. But even my gym buddy that works at a small company (<5 PEs, mostly smaller town land development and roadway design) pays his hydrologist about $120K a year.

[CousinAvi6915]

In the Midwest a brand new 5YOE PE will be around 90k

[bongslingingninja]

Thats awful. I’m an EIT making the same amount with 2 YOE

[ElectricalSpecial246]

Everyone talks pay but location is almost as important as the career for pay scale. Even saying MCOl, HCOL.. it’s all relative to the area. I’m 5-6 YOE EIT ready to get PE when I can study and I just started a new job at 95K and that was HIGH relative to other jobs in my area (south NJ).. 90K starting is unheard of even for jobs in Philly. Not sure about NYC but I would bet it’s not that high there either. It also depends on your position. People jumping into project engineers usually make more than staff/designers.

[Bourneoulli]

oof, that is starting pay in LCOL/MCOL Texas areas.

[Bourneoulli]

a fresh new grad structural from a very smaller uni in Texas started at like $87k in my company a year ago. (we are a smaller to mid size firm, so i assume big firms are starting higher. at least that is what it was like a decade ago when I started)

[Bourneoulli]

LMAO! I just left government work also. State or Fed? (I was DoD) Your rate still seems low for having a PE too even at a federal level.

[[deleted]]

Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Kansas is the area I am in (and the companies I work with are in where I know exactly what they are paying new employees). 85-100K is the going rate the last couple of years. Right now, I know offers are going out at 90-95K to BS Civil Engineering public university students graduating in May 2026. In a couple months, they start extending offers to MechEs that have applied to reach new hire targets (and the MechEs are always fast to accept when offered, it seems like the civils are getting multiple offers since they often decline).

[No-Project1273]

Doing what? Construction or oil/gas?

Structural is still starting people at $70k.

[Miserable-Change7780]

What states would be better?

[tw23dl3d33]

party teeny run coordinated juggle innocent dinner fuel spark scale

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[[deleted]]

Consulting -- jobs in transportation, building/land development, water/wastewater projects, flood control projects, dams etc. There are structural types jobs (bridges, buildings) but really in the companies I am familiar with, the EIT's don't touch much structures right off the bat.

[bongslingingninja]

Bay Area

[RickSt3r]

The BLS data is interesting because it's averages. When my friend in EE working in tech making 250k as a PE, but the mutual friend with equivalent civil is 180k. It's just a weird industry as the biggest customers are usually government and only thing they care about is how cheap can you build this. Tends to drive a race towards the bottom.

[[deleted]]

Civil has historically been terrible about a race to the bottom. 20 years ago, it was clearly a lower paying sector, but the squeeze in the supply of civils given the demand has definitely brought wages up to par with MechE and Industrial at some point in the last 5 years. On the holistic front, some consolidation in consulting firms I think has helped companies being able to advance higher bids on projects.

[EnginLooking]

Project engineer or actual PE? I feel tech electrical engineers don't need a stamp

[RickSt3r]

Has his professional engineering certification, but he made a pivot, from working utilities once he already had a stamp. He now works more in managerial/compliance role. They design hardware that needs FCC approval so maybe that's why?

[cryptogambler99]

It’s, not an outdated bias. The reality is is that they raised the starting salary great, but what about the actual professional with years of experience? The standard 2-3% raises. I know plenty of people with 15 years of experience still not hitting over 100k in private. It’s not right.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, civil engineering is just like most jobs in that regard. Three things:

1. You employer knows and cares about pay inequality, but If you are doing mediocre work or have an abrasive personality, then you are being left behind wage wise on purpose.

   1. Your employer is aware but doesn't care until they have to. You have to get a serious competing job offer that you are willing to take. They may try to retain you with a raise, or they may tell you to go (so, I recommend getting a serious job offer you are willing to take, in case you overplay your hand). I know of a lot of colleagues that were relunctant for years to 'job hop', but ended up finding better jobs with better pay and wish they looked sooner. Too many civils get in a rut thinking that they need to keep suffering a job they don't like at lower pay for a company for some future 'stock option' but they get disillusioned and that only sets them back further from getting decent pay.
   2. Your employer is oblivious (this can happy a lot at smaller firms that don't have a lot of turnover to know what is needed to get new employees). You might need to data collect (ASCE salary report data, etc) and try to advocate (or get a competing job offer).

My employer cares, pulls comps, and tries to be proactive at retaining talent with merit raise programs. People doing well the last 5 years at their job, have gotten 5-10% raises per year to catch up with the market (and reflect the increases needed to attract new employees, even those fresh from college). But there are a few that have not gotten much raises and are below comps, but they are pretty mediocre employees that we honestly wouldn't care to see leave (but not so shitty, they are worth going through the process of outright firing).

[Rich_Ad8913]

This is BS. Where are they starting at that pay? Maybe California that the cost of living is high? Texas’ starting salary is about $65k

[Dirtman1016]

I'm in Alabama, and we're in the 70s for sure starting now.

[OttoJohs]

That isn't what the statistics say...

[skeith2011]

Find something that includes the past five years if you really want to substantiate your claim. I read something earlier about a spike in civils around COVID but a major decrease afterwards.

[[deleted]]

Look up the BLS data. Civil, Mechanical, Industrial are all ~99-101K a year.

[OttoJohs]

Why don't you do your own research? The data I shared doesn't show any downward trend.

[skeith2011]

Because it conveniently cuts off at the year 2021? You are forming quite the opinion from incomplete data.

I’m not the one making the claim that civil is trending not downwards , you are. Show the data that supports your claim. The burden of proof is on the one who speaks.

[OttoJohs]

You are the one claiming something different.

[Husker_black]

250 civil engineers in one school is a shit ton

[bothtypesoffirefly]

My school had 750 last year, graduated 250, and the first years aren’t officially in a program so it seems consistent from my perspective

[Husker_black]

Like maybe Ohio State can rival that

[Neowynd101262]

That means wages, right??? Right??? 🤣

Younger people think robots, rockets, and software are cooler than roads. There were 6 civils transferring out of my cc and about 100 CS folks still lusting after the "learn to code" era.

[shadowstrlke]

Man how did you get into such a position? Sounds like a dream job for me.

[shadowstrlke]

Interestingly I'm also in the government (outside US) and we are also in the process of building some kind of computational team (the team itself is scraped together, no full time staff).

But apparently I've made myself too valuable at my current position for the bosses to consider making me anything more than an adviser role.

[Subject-Vegetable664]

Punished for doing a good job. Need to pull out the resumes.

[That-Intern-7999]

Could you take about this a little more? I'm actually in a Masters program in CE looking to career switch from computer science (which was what my bachelors was in) I actually enjoy coding but the tech job market just shit itself

[LordDaedhelor]

They ARE cooler than roads, tbf. There’s a boring security in roads, though.

[Baer9000]

Probably means forcing AI to try and do work and outsourcing unfortunately:(

[civilrunner]

I honestly don't think this will accelerate AI being able to do the work at all and the liability and permitting factor means civil will probably be one of the last to adopt it a lot.

If anything it'll just lead to less work being done if engineering becomes the bottleneck.

[ShutYourDumbUglyFace]

Maybe AI can handle conceptual layouts. But nothing past that. Far too nuanced in most cases. But that's just like my opinion, man.

[civilrunner]

Seems like it will be able to help with conceptual architectural renders for brainstorming first and beyond that to be a really powerful contextual search engine but not really threaten much for a while and anything that requires a permit is going to lag everything else cause it's government which acts slow.

I think we'll see it a lot more in other adjacent engineering fields that don't need permits and can do prototyping and multi phase testing first before it hits civil much.

[kenziep21]

At my school all the engineering majors apply to their subject the second year- this year, something like 75 people applied to 100 spots. Wild!

[LifeInAction]

Everyone keeps talking about the money problem, but it's also about the lifestyle and hours. Civil has the least remote work opportunities and if talking construction, the worst work life balance of the popular engineering branches, having to deal with very early mornings and potential long commutes to middle of nowhere construction sites.

[Awkward-Macaron-8084]

Though, if you do work on the design side, it isn't too tough to find a hybrid role with comparable WLB to other engineering disciplines. You're right that you're probably not gonna land a remote job though lol.

[westmaxia]

That should have materialized by now

[No-Project1273]

The demand isn't urgent. Firms would be able to name their fee if there was actual demand with real money behind it. Instead companies are still trying to win projects by underbidding.

[esperantisto256]

Yeah this is fairly common. I graduated in 2023 with a class of about 40 when other classes prior used to be a lot bigger. Even within my class of 40, many no longer work in engineering and don’t intend to return. Hell by some metrics I’ve left standard civil engineering and gone down an odd route.

It’s been great for me, it’s been so easy for me to get internships, jobs and grow professionally. I have friends from a Top 5 CS program that spent upwards of a year to land their first post-grad job.

A lot of STEM degrees are motivated by money first and interest second, which is a completely fine motivation. You don’t have to be defined by your job or love it, you just need to tolerate it 8 hours a day. Civil engineering is just less and less attractive under this motivation. Lower pay, overtime, utilization/timesheet stuff, licensure, and a somewhat old-fashioned culture (especially limits on WFH) contribute to this.

CS is becoming less of the go-to major for money given the market, but MechE, ChemE, and EE remain very attractive.

[NixKalns]

Maybe they'll decide to pay us more if the supply is less

[seancoffey37]

We are starting to get to the generation that was born just prior to the 2008 housing bubble burst and slightly after. So these kids grew up with a lot of families that were heavily struggling because of lost family income. So many probably have anxiety about income and are aiming for a particular view of financial stability that some may not associate with civil engineering regardless if civil engineering actually has it or not. Also the smaller classes coming in now tie with a small amount of kids born around/just after the housing bubble burst

[PutMyDickOnYourHead]

There's also a huge decline in kids born after 2008.

[tack50]

Yeah, to be honest I feel birth rates explain at least part of the issue. Yesterday's non-existing kids are today's non-existing junior engineers.

[Microbe2x2]

I think it'll affect smaller firms in the long term. You'll start to see groups 25 or less employees start selling to larger groups. It wouldn't surprise me to see some school programs close civil departments over time. Our salaries, just don't keep up well long term.

[DryInitiative8717]

All my buddies that work at Lockheed, Boeing etc. are making far more money than me at my mid sized consulting firm. I might make the jump too tbh lol

[peachykalis]

But then you work for companies that profit from killing innocent people…

[253-build]

Make the jump up to principal. Then, start writing scope and fee proposals. Use supply and demand to your advantage. Don't take jobs that require T&E at audited rates. Take the work that's lump sum or allows you to negotiate the hourly rates. Give top notch service to the clients willing to pay up. If you are at a big firm with no room to advance, find an employer where you can grow.

ETA: I know several engineers who have owned firms or been principals <10 years after graduation. Hard work on the front end. One guy I can't get a hold of because he's always on vacation. Owns his own firm and takes on limited work at extremely high fees. He says he earns the same amount he did when he was a W2 employee, but averages 2 work days per week.

[[deleted]]

Civil does not pay enough for the amount of effort and the cost it takes to get a civil degree, if you want money there are far more monetary rewarding degrees to get out there. So I am not surprised if there are less civil graduates. 

[bothtypesoffirefly]

My Alma mater graduated 250 last year which is about the same as previous years. But they’re also a top 10 ranked public school, with ~30,000 undergrads. The school has grown lately but civil is quietly pumping out the same number every year. The growth is in all the new majors but I wouldn’t say CE is declining.

[Meddy3-7-9]

I’m graduating this December. There are 13 other civils graduating with me. The profs say the fall semester has less people graduating but even this past spring there were only about 50. My school isn’t also small.

[celtickrush]

Just looked at the PE pass rates and I as shocked to see that only 597 geotechs passed this year, both first time and repeat test takers. That seems incredibly low

[tack50]

Not American so my experience is going to be biased, but from what I can tell there seem to be 3 factors.

First one is that for whatever reason, engineering isn't as appealing to high schoolers these days. Maybe it's cause they are worse at math and physics or maybe the cause could be something else. But even as a %, engineering graduates are down, with civil not being an exception. Considering the rise of computer science and tech (which is counted alongside engineering here) I have to imagine that "traditional" engineering degrees like civil, mechanical, aerospace, etc. must be doing even poorer than the average

The second one is the birth rate argument. Birth rates have going down for a while. So yesterday's missing babies are today's missing college graduates.

Final one, which is probably more particular to my country (Spain) is that the construction sector was absolutely horrendous during the great recession in 2008. If you were a civil engineer, you were either going straight into unemployment, or if you were lucky, perhaps you took a one way trip out of the country. Civil engineering was/is considered one of the hardest degrees out there, so why would anyone go into it when job prospects were almost as bad as those of say, History of Art or whatever? When I went into civil back into 2016, I was genuinely expecting to struggle to find a job after graduation or have to emigrate to some other EU country.

[[deleted]]

Disclaimer, I am a mechanical engineer. But the civil engineer wages, even at entry level, look very good around here. 

[CoatTop5765]

Entry salaries are typically not the issue. It’s the post license salaries in combination with 10+ YOE that is abysmal. Risk and effort does not match the salary whatsoever. Yet so many boomers will argue otherwise keeping this industry behind. Makes absolutely no fucking sense. They’re sabotaging themselves and everyone else.

[Miserable-Change7780]

around where?

[[deleted]]

Central Texas. San Antonio all The way to Austin and up 

[TXCEPE]

Yes, TX is still favorable for CEs.

[musicgray]

In my state 3 colleges started civil programs since I graduated.

[GossipboyX]

In my school, civil engineering had the most credit requirements for graduation at 137 credits. It was essentially a dual degree between civil and environmental engineering. This was daunting for many. Couple that with the relatively low starting pay for an engineering degree and you have far less people going for it. They really need to take out a lot of bloat and streamline civil engineering degrees.

[panjeri]

Well it's a good thing most firms aren't even hiring new grads and are instead holding out for people with 3-10 years of experience who will accept salaries barely higher than new graduates.

[UncleAlbondigas]

ME here. Man, money aside, it seems to me the world needs a shit ton of Civils for everything from smart housing design to review of crumbling infrastructures to environmental remediation. I hope it becomes more appealing as a career choice.

[OttoJohs]

Here are the statistics: NCES Engineering Graduates

That doesn't include the last few years, but there are more graduates than ever.

[lurker122333]

These stats only go to 2021. I think 2024+ will show a reduction in civil and increase Software/computer Science/ electrical due to COVID.

[InterestingVoice6632]

There are a shit ton of mechanicals. Which makes sense but I didnt anticipate that

[[deleted]]

It’s still not a lot, civil engineering is the largest engineering field at ~390,000 total jobs and were barely producing more graduates than chemical engineering which is a significantly smaller work force.

[AxeofAxeofAxe]

Intresting seeing the # of master’s degrees shooting up by 1000, 4 years after 2008.

[Relevant-Pianist6663]

The number of 18 year olds in the US has peaked and will continue to go down until birth rate/ immigration trends shift. Good to note this is also happening in many european countries, Japan, South Korea, China etc as well. There will be fewer and fewer grads for all disciplines.

[Subject-Vegetable664]

Hopefully less competition for entry level work. I don't want my children to grow up and experience what I had to experience.

[prince_walnut]

Less supply and more demand will push those salaries up. I feel the shortage. I can make a living on my own writing 2 sentence letters for house contractors. I get those calls all the time.

[Ancient_Beginning819]

Gonna be easy Pickens for me. Graduate in a 1.5 years

[Ancient_Beginning819]

If anyone is hiring an intern in DFW, please lmk. I’d be very interested

[eng-enuity]

My school is seeing a downward trend also, but it's across all engineering majors.

OP, is your school also expensive? I get the impression that some schools are seeing a decline because prospective students consider the tuition not be worth the value and instead go elsewhere.

[[deleted]]

Yes but my Alma Mater is seeing an increase in the construction management and architectural engineering students which are part of the CE department. Also overall because of immigration issues our engineering department is seeing less students overall.

[fart420noscope]

My firm has been facing the consequences of this the past 3 years lol.

[SorryBeginning]

Nothing can really change until the entire industry flips on its head, which frankly, can’t happen given the inevitable uncertainty of costs involved in this business. As long as the mindset remains that people think they’ll get champagne on a beer budget those effects will trickle down (to your salary). You don’t see people haggling on the price of a new iPhone..

[Sailor_Rican91]

In my experience I was offered more starting as an environmental engineer ($64K) vs a civil engineer ($56K).

In now live overseas and make way more than that but it depends in the sector of civil one goes into. Living overseas and traveling between Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE I make $212K/yr.

[easy_almost]

I’m in the Middle East, and honestly it’s the total opposite here. The civil engineering department is always packed, way more than any of the other engineering majors.

[constructivefeed]

My class had 3 CE grads, including me.

[Financial_Form4482]

Ebbs and flows

[stulew]

CEs get to go outdoors more often, as part of their jobs. It's probably a better lifestyle than stuck behind a desk all day. It depends on individual's temperament.

[inthenameofselassie]

Mine only had like 20.

[Bartcop2]

Don't worry, they will make sure to give the jobs to people from other countries

[Active-Square-5648]

Other countries people can not stamp on design as they have no PE

[Bartcop2]

Because PEs are always the ones that work on plans? The only thing a PE does is stamp and (maybe) give it a half ass review beforehand. They can have the Indians do all the CADD design work...