{"id":4619,"date":"2024-09-27T07:13:39","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T07:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/workhouse.sweetdishy.com\/?p=4619"},"modified":"2024-09-27T07:13:40","modified_gmt":"2024-09-27T07:13:40","slug":"employment-of-chemical-engineers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workhouse.sweetdishy.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/27\/employment-of-chemical-engineers\/","title":{"rendered":"Employment of Chemical Engineers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The U.S. Department of Labor maintains an extensive database of labor and economic statistics through its Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov). The career information about duties, education, training, pay, and current and future prospects for practically any occupation can be found in the\u00a0Occupational Outlook Handbook<\/em>\u00a0(www.bls.gov\/ooh) published by the Bureau. The handbook lists the myriad industries\u2014chemicals, fuels, energy, food, drugs, electronics, clothing, life sciences, biotechnology, and many others\u2014where chemical engineers find employment. It lists the median pay for the chemical engineering jobs to be $96,400 (for 2014) and projects a 2% annual growth in the number of jobs. The handbook very likely underestimates the actual number of chemical engineering jobs, with a more realistic number estimated by summing up the number of graduates over an average of 40 years [15]. A National Science Foundation (www.nsf.gov) estimate put the total number of working chemical engineers in 2002 across all occupations at closer to 200,000 [15].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chemical process industries, composed of chemical and fuels manufacturing and associated R&D, engineering, and environmental services, are the biggest employers of chemical engineers [15]. The initial placement of new chemical engineering graduates conforms to this distribution as well. According to the 2015 initial placement survey of college graduates, conducted by the AIChE [16], nearly half of the graduates opted for industrial careers, and nearly a quarter of the bachelor\u2019s degree graduates chose to continue their education. Although a majority of those going to graduate study were continuing in the chemical engineering field, many chose different engineering fields or even medicine for further studies. For those opting for\u00a0industrial careers, the chemicals sector was the dominant choice, followed by fuels, engineering services, and biotechnology, as shown in\u00a0Figure 1.8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Image\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Figure 1.8<\/strong> Initial placement of chemical engineering graduates in 2013\u20132014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: CEP News Update, \u201cAIChE\u2019s Initial Placement Survey: Where Is the Class of 2015?\u201d\u00a0Chemical Engineering Progress<\/em>, Vol. 111, No. 12, 2015, pp. 5\u20136.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This distribution was slightly different from the choices of 2014 graduates, of whom half still opted for industrial careers with chemicals as the dominant choice, but a significantly larger fraction opted for jobs in the fuels sector, and the biotechnology sector was not as dominant, lagging behind the food sector [17].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditionally, chemical engineers have pursued careers in the chemicals and fuels sectors of the industry. However, over the past two decades, increasingly greater numbers are being attracted by the pharmaceutical, biomedical, and microelectronics industries [18]. From a historical perspective, we can look back at chemical engineering since the beginning of the 20th century and recognize a few \u201cgolden ages\u201d of the disciplines\u2014times of unprecedented discoveries, developments, and industrial growth [19]. The 10 years from 1915 to 1925 and the decades of the 1950s and 1960s are time periods that exhibit such characteristics. It is, of course, impossible to predict the future; however, the current environment is characterized by possibly unlimited opportunities for chemical engineering due to developments in molecular biological sciences and computing and information technology. Chemical engineers, due to the breadth and depth of their preparation, are\u00a0ideally positioned to enter this new golden age and find solutions to challenges in the areas of environment, resources, energy, food, health, and many other fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Salary and benefits data for chemical engineers are regularly collected by the professional societies of individuals associated with chemistry-related fields\u2014the AIChE as well as the American Chemical Society (ACS,\u00a0www.acs.org).\u00a0Figure 1.9\u00a0shows the median initial starting salaries of inexperienced chemical engineers holding a bachelor\u2019s degree over the last 10 years [20]. These salaries have slightly outpaced inflation. As expected, the salaries also exhibit a slight dip coinciding with the overall downturn in the economy around 2009 to 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Image\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Figure 1.9<\/strong> Median starting salaries of inexperienced chemical engineers with a bachelor\u2019s degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Marchant, S., and C. Marchant,\u00a0Starting Salaries of Chemists and Chemical Engineers: 2014 Analysis of the American Chemical Society\u2019s Survey of New Graduates in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering<\/em>, American Chemical Society, Washington, D.C., 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The average starting salaries of chemical engineers are second only to those of petroleum engineers at the bachelor\u2019s level. However, chemical engineers command the highest salaries at the master\u2019s level [21]. The median salaries of chemical engineers having less than 6 years of experience, shown in\u00a0Figure 1.10, are based on the data collected by AIChE through its biennial salary survey [22].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Image\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Figure 1.10<\/strong>\u00a0Median salaries of chemical engineers with less than 6 years of experience [22].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Chemical Engineering Progress<\/em>, \u201c2007 AIChE Salary Survey,\u201d Vol. 103, No. 8, 2007, pp. 25\u201330; \u201c2009 AIChE Salary Survey,\u201d Vol. 105, No. 8, 2009, pp. 26\u201332; \u201c2011 AIChE Salary Survey,\u201d Vol. 107, No. 6, 2011, pp. S1\u2013S13; \u201c2013 AIChE Salary Survey,\u201d Vol. 109, No. 6, 2013, pp. S1\u2013S17; \u201c2015 AIChE Salary Survey,\u201d Vol. 111, No. 6, 2015, pp. S1\u2013S20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can be seen that a graduate degree generally translates into higher salary for a chemical engineer, though this effect is not as pronounced for master\u2019s-level graduates as it is for those holding a doctorate. The differences in the salaries of bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degree holders were\u00a0insignificant in 2015. Further, the economic downturn clearly impacted those holding advanced degrees more than those holding only a bachelor\u2019s degree, whose salaries did not show any decrease. In contrast, the salaries of those holding a Ph.D. were impacted significantly. The biennial surveys provide a valuable and extensive database, where additional information based on regions, industry sectors, experience, and many other factors is available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Department of Labor maintains an extensive database of labor and economic statistics through its Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov). The career information about duties, education, training, pay, and current and future prospects for practically any occupation can be found in the\u00a0Occupational Outlook Handbook\u00a0(www.bls.gov\/ooh) published by the Bureau. The handbook lists the myriad industries\u2014chemicals, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1-the-chemical-engineering-profession"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/workhouse.sweetdishy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/chemical.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/workhouse.sweetdishy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/workhouse.sweetdishy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/workhouse.sweetdishy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workhouse.sweetdishy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workhouse.sweetdishy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/workhouse.sweetdishy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4620,"href":"https:\/\/workhouse.sweetdishy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4619\/revisions\/4620"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workhouse.sweetdishy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/workhouse.sweetdishy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workhouse.sweetdishy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workhouse.sweetdishy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}