The Case for Civil Engineering in an Uncertain World
Infrastructure Catalyst
Issue #6 | February 09, 2026
In 2025, engineering firms turned down work because they couldn't find enough civil engineers. That same year, tech companies laid off 245,000 people. One profession has a labor shortage. The other has a job shortage. The difference matters.
The numbers tell the story. Civil engineering graduates face 1.0 percent unemployment. Computer science graduates face 6.1 percent. The ASCE 2025 Salary Report found that average civil engineering salaries reached $148,000, up $25,000 from 2022. Meanwhile, 51 percent of engineering firms are turning down profitable projects because they cannot hire fast enough.
For two decades, the career hierarchy seemed obvious. Tech was the future. Civil engineering was the fallback. I watched classmates pivot to software. I stayed. That ranking has quietly reversed.
Why civil engineering resists disruption
Two structural factors protect this profession in ways that software cannot replicate.
First, the work requires expertise that takes years to build. A single infrastructure project touches structural, geotechnical, hydraulic, environmental, and traffic systems simultaneously. The soil report contradicts the survey. The client changes scope mid-design. The utility company discovers an unmarked line. Knowing what matters, what can flex, and what will cause failure downstream comes from experience. AI can optimize isolated variables. It cannot replicate a decade of learning what goes wrong.
Second, public safety creates friction. When bridges collapse, people die. That reality has produced regulatory and liability frameworks designed to slow disruption. The Professional Engineer license requires a four-year degree, two rigorous exams, and four years of supervised experience. A PE stamps drawings with their personal license number. When something fails, they face consequences. That accountability cannot be delegated to an algorithm or an overseas contractor.
Some tasks can be automated or offshored. Drafting, modeling, and repetitive calculations are already changing. But field inspections, permitting, coordination, and stamping cannot move. Even if half the work evolves, the remaining half still requires a licensed professional physically present in the jurisdiction, taking personal responsibility.
Why demand keeps accelerating
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act committed $1.2 trillion through September 2026. Those projects are now underway, with timelines stretching years into the future. Reauthorization discussions have already begun. The American Society of Civil Engineers identifies a $3.7 trillion infrastructure gap over the next decade. This figure represents not new ambitions but deferred maintenance finally coming due.
The supply side is contracting just as fast. The Brookings Institution estimates that 1.7 million infrastructure workers leave their jobs annually, largely through retirement. Replacing their expertise takes over a decade. The math is straightforward: massive demand, shrinking supply.
New drivers keep emerging. Even the technology replacing other jobs creates demand for civil engineers. Every AI query runs on servers housed in a data center. Someone had to design that building's foundation, grade the site, manage its stormwater, and route its utilities. Data center construction hit record levels in 2024 and 2025. Space-based alternatives are coming, but terrestrial facilities won't disappear overnight. The demand is here now.
Climate adaptation has created an entirely new category of infrastructure work. Communities need sea walls, flood control systems, and resilient rebuilding after disasters. The EPA estimates that $625 billion is needed over the next 20 years for drinking water infrastructure alone. Grid electrification requires site development for renewable energy and battery storage. Each of these projects requires civil engineers.
The next decade will test whether this stability holds. AI will automate portions of design. Firms will offshore what they can. But the core of the work, the licensed professional standing on site and taking responsibility, has no substitute. That bottleneck is the moat.
Civil engineers report 86.2 percent job satisfaction, compared to roughly 50 percent of American workers overall. The work produces something physical. When you finish a project, it exists. People drive on it. Your children can see it.
Tech still offers higher compensation for the exceptional few. But reaching that outcome requires surviving layoffs, outcompeting a global talent pool, and staying relevant as AI reshapes the field every year.
For two decades, choosing civil engineering felt like settling. The safe path. The fallback. But for engineers who want stability, meaningful work, and a career that doesn't reset every three years, civil engineering offers something rare: a path you can actually plan around.
I'd like to hear your take. When did stability become the risky choice?
Joseph Dib, PE, PMP
Infrastructure Catalyst
