Page 54 of a Professionals Australia report [1] despite the low sampling size and less reliable methodology mirrors your comment that engineering contractor rat

Page 54 of a Professionals Australia report [1] despite the low sampling size and less reliable methodology mirrors your comment that engineering contractor rates are much lower than ICT contracting rates in Australia. I'm a qualified engineer in Australia and amongst those who graduated at the same time as me, almost all of them are working in the ICT field. That is where the demand for workers is, and probably the main reasons driving ICT salaries and contract rates higher. Defence sector engineers also seem to have high rates on par with the ICT field for various reasons including high barriers of entry (Australian citizenship for starters), high levels of federal government investment and little effort expended in training people to join the sector. There are Civil Engineering degrees offered everywhere, but not widespread "Design some ships for the Navy" degrees. For the mining boom starting about 2010, engineering was highly sought after but was mostly conducted by engineering firms in Europe, America, etc due to the lack of experienced workers in Australia (partly resulting from a massive lull in investment in preceding years). Given that exploration investment is currently at record highs, perhaps engineers with mining industry experience could again be in high demand soon. Engineering related to the renewable energy sector I assume would also be starting a boom cycle too. The cooling effect on engineering as a profession though I think is the use of standards and resulting cookie-cutter approach of clients being able to almost get the point of saying "Give me an AS/ISO 1234 bridge" or "Give me an AS/ISO 5678 substation". Hence there is not a significant amount of original nor complex engineering performed for most projects, rather, it is performing minor tweaks to existing standard designs. Then there is seemingly more supply for engineering services than there is demand for the services, and qualified engineers end up performing non-engineering roles such as project management and sales within the engineering sectors. [1] https://members.professionalsaustralia.org.au/documents/Engineers/RemunerationReport/Professional-Engineers-Employment-and-Remuneration-Survey-Report-2020-21.pdf https://members.professionalsaustralia.org.au/documents/Engi...