Per the DOE, “Employers also reported the greatest difficulty in finding qualified workers in the professional and business services sector, with 93% saying they encountered at least some difficulty in hiring.”
Not coincidentally, professional and business services is one of the prime targets of our expanded certificate and certification programs at ANS. Our goal is to grow the “lateral flow” of job seekers into nuclear from other industries, especially those such as oil and gas, aerospace, chemicals, and defense, that have an otherwise high level of skills overlap.
There is still strong demand for nuclear engineers, though we need to do some mythbusting: There is a persistent belief in the commercial nuclear industry that “we don’t need that many nuclear engineers” to achieve the expansion we see coming. The U.S. Department of Labor has certainly bought into it, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 1 percent decline in the number of nuclear engineers over the next 10 years. It’s BS, and here’s why: When including national laboratories, universities, and government agencies, there is still high demand for engineers. The DOL fails to recognize that as much as 50 percent of engineering graduates eventually pursue careers outside of traditional engineering roles.
The recent executive orders signed by President Trump direct Energy Secretary Wright to “take steps to increase access to research and development infrastructure, workforce, and expertise at Department of Energy National Laboratories for college and university students studying nuclear engineering and other nuclear energy–related fields.” A good first step would be for DOE staff to have a word with their colleagues at the DOL: The current BLS outlook is incorrect, and it is scaring people away from the field.
Then there are the larger demographic headwinds. In America today, we have approximately 7 million able-bodied men who are neither working nor actively looking for work. Meanwhile, the U.S. job market has 7 million unfilled jobs, most of which do not require a college degree.
The desire for a remote or hybrid workplace, especially among Millennials and Gen Zers, is also a problem. As a recent Kinsey report put it, “The on-site and highly structured nature of construction and manufacturing jobs typically doesn’t map to these preferences.”
In sum, it’s easy to understand why CEOs rank the workforce as their biggest worry. Solving this problem will require strong government support and coordination among industry, educational institutions, and nongovernmental organizations at all levels of education. Instead of arguing over the optimal skills mix, let’s agree that we need more of everything.
