THE BEECHMONT CREST CAREER GUIDE:
SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN THE CORPORATE JUNGLE
Chapter 1: What do Employers Want?
Supply, Demand, and Other Factors beyond your Control
Many pundits have claimed that the dotcom bust was “unique in history.” While certain aspects of the phenomenon may have been unique, this was not the first time that employment in a technical field underwent a radical boom-to-bust transition. Long before the dotcommers got their pink slips, workers riding the tides of once promising fields like nuclear energy and defense saw their fortunes rise and fall.
In the 1970s, nuclear engineering was regarded as a promising field of study. The United States had suffered through a crippling round of oil shortages throughout most of the decade; and more than a few experts were declaring that the widespread adoption of nuclear power was the logical—and inevitable—alternative to fossil fuels. According to the experts of the time, nuclear power was “poised to become the predominant source of energy” in the United States.
“Nuclear energy is poised to become the predominant source of energy for Americans by the mid-1990s.” -Carter administration spokesperson, 1977
Suppose that it’s 1977, and you’re an eighteen-year-old college freshman who is trying to pick a major. You have been told that within a few years, there will be a rush to build a nuclear power plant in every city in the United States. Obviously, this would mean lots of jobs for nuclear engineers. You scored within the top percentiles on the math section of the SAT, and in grade school and high school you had been the kid who always seemed to take the blue ribbon at the science fair. So, what would be your obvious choice of major? Nuclear engineering, of course. After all, this path was practically guaranteed to assure you steady, meaningful employment for life.
Then on March 28th, 1979, a partial meltdown occurred in Reactor 2 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. The impact on the surrounding community was immediate. Over 2,000 personal injury claims would be filed in the months to follow. Within the next decade and a half, additional lawsuits alleged high rates of birth defects, cancer, and other illnesses as a direct result of exposure to radiation from the meltdown. The Three Mile Island case would drag on until 1996, and would become inextricably linked with the words “nuclear power.”
As a result of the negative publicity, American public opinion regarding nuclear power dramatically shifted from optimistic to wary. During the 1980s, two additional developments—lower oil prices and a far worse nuclear accident at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union—dampened almost all public enthusiasm for building nuclear power plants.
“In the mid-1950s, nuclear physicists confidently predicted that nuclear energy would usher in a golden age. ..Ironically, however, this same industry is also teetering on the verge of collapse….Never in modern history has a major technology, with the full backing of industry and the government, come to such an abrupt halt….” -Michio Kaku and Jennifer Trainer, Nuclear Power: Both Sides (1982)
“Let's face it. We don't want safe nuclear power plants. We want NO nuclear power plants.”- Spokesperson for the Government Accountability Project (reported in The American Spectator, 11/85)
In the 1980s, while nuclear engineers were weathering a slump (from which the field has never fully recovered), it was a great time to be an aerospace engineer. The Reagan defense buildup of the 1980s was the largest in history, and there were thousands of jobs to be found at defense contractors like Boeing and Lockheed. (Many of the key weapons systems that were employed throughout the 1990s in Iraq and Kosovo were developed during the defense spending boom of the 1980s.) The demand for aerospace engineers in the defense sector raised the salaries of aerospace engineers to historic highs; and related engineering fields (such as electrical and mechanical engineering) benefited as well.
Then in 1989, world events dealt a blow to the defense industry. This time the catalyst was not a nuclear accident--but the fall of the Soviet Union. Old enemies were being toppled in rapid succession across Europe. Every month seemed to bring another coup or collapse behind the Iron Curtain. The dreaded Berlin Wall fell in 1989; and by 1992, Russia was no longer under the control of the Communist Party.
While this was good news for the world in general, it was not necessarily the best time to be working for a defense contractor. Striking a chord of agreement that would have been unthinkable just a few years early, both Democrats and Republicans were now pushing for defense spending cuts. The term “peace dividend” became a media buzzword. Defense contractors began to lay off employees instead of hire them, and aerospace engineers were among the thousands of displaced workers who were scrambling to find new jobs.
Petroleum / geological engineering? Two additional engineering fields that have been hit by global change are the petroleum and geological engineering fields. These fields were considered hot in the 1970s; but oil companies have hired fewer petroleum and geological engineers in recent years.
Copyright 2006 Beechmont Crest Publishing
