All this set me off to find some definitive source of occupational projections around the engineering profession. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a highly credible source that’s readily available. The United States Department of Labor released a fairly comprehensive projection for the decade between 2008 and 2018 across all functional professions with a specific area that focuses on engineering.
Hiring Engineers
Time to Push the Alarm? The Braindrain Threat from Boomer Engineer Retirement
If there were an even distribution of engineers across age groups, then retirement of an entire generation would take away about a third of your staff. However, the saddle shape of the age employment curve means that many engineering organizations are heavily front loaded with Boomer engineers. Furthermore, the far smaller group of Gen X engineers means that there’s not a one-to-one tenured replacement for every retiring Boomer.