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Workforce
Quartiles | Findings | Description
Engineers as share of workforce: 2003
Engineers as share of workforce: 2003
Quartiles
Engineers as share of workforce: 2003*
| 1st Quartile (3.09%–1.08%) |
2nd Quartile (1.06%–0.87%) |
3rd Quartile (0.86%–0.64%) |
4th Quartile (0.63%–0.45%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arizona | Alabama | Delaware | Arkansas |
| California | Alaska | Florida | Idaho |
| Colorado | Illinois | Georgia | Iowa |
| Connecticut | Indiana | Hawaii | Maine |
| District of Columbia | Kansas | Kentucky | Mississippi |
| Maryland | Minnesota | Louisiana | Montana |
| Massachusetts | New Jersey | Missouri | Nebraska |
| Michigan | Pennsylvania | New York | Nevada |
| New Hampshire | Rhode Island | North Carolina | North Dakota |
| New Mexico | South Carolina | Oklahoma | South Dakota |
| Ohio | Texas | Oregon | Vermont |
| Virginia | Utah | Tennessee | West Virginia |
| Washington | Wisconsin | Wyoming | |
| *States in alphabetical order, not data order.
SOURCES: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates; and Local Area Unemployment Statistics. See |
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Findings
- In the United States, 1.4 million individuals, or 1.0% of the workforce, were employed in engineering occupations in 2003.
- The concentration of engineers in individual states ranged from 0.45% to 1.54% in 2003.
- The District of Columbia was an outlier at 3.09%, reflecting the number of engineers who work there but live in neighboring states.
- States in the top quartile for this indicator tended to have a relatively high concentration of high-technology businesses.
Description
This indicator shows the extent to which a state’s workforce includes trained engineers. The indicator encompasses 20 standard occupational codes for engineering fields such as aerospace, agricultural, biomedical, chemical, civil, computer hardware, electrical and electronics, environmental, industrial, marine and naval architectural, materials, mechanical, mining and geological, nuclear, and petroleum. Engineers design and operate production processes and create new products and services.
The location of engineering occupations primarily reflects where the individuals work and is based on estimates from the Occupational Employment Statistics survey, a cooperative program between the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and state employment security agencies. The size of a state’s civilian workforce is estimated from the BLS Current Population Survey, which assigns workers to a location based on residence. Because of this difference and the sample-based nature of the data, estimates for sparsely populated states and the District of Columbia may be imprecise.
