What sort of economic circumstances might a new engineering graduate (EG) face, and how might this extend over their career? Each year I hear students and young engineers express questions or anxiety over issues like debts, salaries, home buying, graduate schools or other vexing fiscal issues. But for those of us mentor-types that are already several decades past university, we may not be as familiar with the existing state of affairs young folks need to handle. Thus I wanted to compile typical current metrics as a refresher.
Engineers are fond of using dimensionless parameters to characterize the essential behavior of systems. These provide an intuition about the nature of the problem. Parameters such as Reynolds numbers or isentropic efficiencies give us generalized clues without the need to refer to a host of other project-specific characteristics about fluid flow or equipment to interpret behavior. In the same fashion here we can try to transform specific recent statistics from the United States of America (U.S.) into dimensionless parameters that can better describe challenges graduates across countries and epochs face. What might “dimensionless profiles” of income, expenses and opportunities look like over your several decades in the workforce? Can one lead a pleasant life as an engineer? When can you buy your Audi?
Challenge #1: avoid buying one of these early
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