Prepare for Workforce Challenges: Insights and Strategies from ACEC & the ACEC Research Institute

To the ACEC Community,

Next Wednesday, the ACEC Research Institute will host an online roundtable discussing the findings of its newly released Firm of the Future study on Workforce. Part of the Institute’s larger Firm of the Future initiative, the report examines the talent landscape for our industry through 2035, integrating demographic analysis, dozens of in-depth personal interviews, and survey responses of more than 2,000 participants from across the engineering profession. Institute Senior Research Consultant Joe Bates and ACEC Workforce Chair and Gresham Smith CEO Rodney Chester will offer their perspectives on what the report found and its potential implications, but here’s the headline: the future of our industry will depend not only on what we build, but on who is left to build it. 

Between 2013 and 2022, the U.S. population grew by 5.7 percent, but the college-age population shrunk by 3.3 percent. That single figure casts a long shadow. It means fewer engineering students entering programs, fewer graduates entering firms, and fewer professionals to deliver the future we have been charged with building. Meanwhile, foreign students offer a potential solution, but immigration policies remain a roadblock. In 2022, more than 40,000 international students earned engineering degrees, but fewer than 10 percent received H-1B visas. That ratio was even lower in mechanical, civil, and electrical engineering. We train them, we need them, but our policies send them home.  

As the talent pipeline continues to narrow, the early-career runway is shortening, and the expectations of our emerging workforce are shifting. At our Fall Conference last month in San Diego, the Institute held a session called “What Young Engineering Professionals Want.” Despite being held in a large space, the session was standing room only—and much of the audience was composed of senior firm leaders. That’s telling. It points to an acknowledgment that workforce remains one of the most consequential issues confronting our industry. As retirements accelerate, degree completions decline, and early-career professionals step off of the wheel, our industry is facing the simple truth that talent is not a given. It’s a system that must be cultivated, a culture that must be created, and a commitment that must be renewed. 

The three young professionals on the panel in San Diego were about a decade into their careers. They talked about how the desire to build things that last propelled them toward engineering. They talked about wanting to see their fingerprints on the world around them. But they also talked about firm cultures that confuse endurance with excellence, leaving little time for much outside of the office.  

It was that always-on culture that led one panelist to consider leaving the industry altogether after having her first child. Just as she was about to call it quits, she secured a role at a firm that views flexibility as the norm, not as a favor. Women are entering the pipeline in growing numbers (43 percent of students), but too many leave before they reach leadership.  And when they do, our industry loses not just what they were, but also what they might have become.  

This is not a moment for panic, but rather for purpose. What our findings reveal is that firms must treat talent as infrastructure: something to be planned for, invested in, and maintained.  

I encourage you to download the Institute’s workforce study and share it with your colleagues and to also register for next week’s webinar.  

One last note about workforce issues. ACEC continues to make the case for more engineers through our work as a leader in the Engineering Workforce Consortium and as part of our ongoing Engineering and Public Works Roadshow. Tomorrow, our Director of Workforce Strategy, Molly Tuttle, will participate in a session organized by the Governor of Oklahoma’s Workforce Commission to focus on the need to grow the state’s STEM workforce. She will be joined by our Roadshow counterparts from ASCE and APWA, and by ACEC Oklahoma.  

We look forward to reporting what she learned in the discussion. 

Until then, have a great week, 

Linda Bauer Darr

President & CEO

American Council of Engineering Companies | ACEC

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