JSF report warns of surplus engineers, saturated labour market

AMMAN — The Jordan Strategy Forum (JSF) anticipates that the unemployment rate among engineers in the Kingdom will probably increase if the ratio of engineering graduates goes up without reconsidering the majors that align with the market demand.

A JSF study released on Wednesday said that the surplus of engineers in the local labour market cannot be confirmed, but the growth percentage of engineers is still huge.

If growth continues, unemployment among engineers in the Kingdom will go up, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, said, citing the JSF report.

According to the Jordan Engineers Association’s (JEA) 2018 report, the number of registered engineers in the years 2009-2018 increased annually by 7.6 per cent.

In 2016 alone, 8,614 engineers graduated from public and private universities in Jordan, adding to the already “huge” number of registered engineers, with different engineering specialties, at the JEA, Petra said.

The JSF describes this rate as relatively high, citing 88,052 students enrolled in various engineering majors, comprising nearly 17.2 per cent of the total number of university students.

The forum also said that the average ratio of registered Jordanian engineers to the total work force during the 2013-2017 period hit 8 per cent, as cited by Petra.

Considering the proportional distribution of working Jordanians in correspondence to the sector, some fields related to engineering works marked the highest percentage of recruitment in Jordan, the JSF added.

The report highlighted that the workers in these sector are not only engineers.

There is a need in these sectors for skilled professional and vocational workers in the fields of transformative industries and construction, the JSF underlined.

Although employing a large percentage of the Kingdom’s work force, Jordan’s engineering sectors have been stagnant in recent years, according to the forum.

The construction and real estate sectors witnessed a drop in recruitment in 2017 and have not created new job opportunities, the JSF reported.

A lot of workers lost their jobs, the JSF stressed.

The report also indicated that engineering specialties are saturated, calling for a revisiting of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes offered at public and private universities in Jordan.