One in every 40 Jordanians is an engineer, making Jordan the country with the most engineers per capita globally, according to the bulletin (11) issued by the Jordanian Engineers Association (JEA) on Monday. 

"The average unemployment rate among engineers in Jordan is 25 per cent, but the unemployment rate differs from one engineering specialty to another,’’ Tarek Momani, head of Training and Employment at the JEA, told The Jordan Times.

Momani added that the JEA extracted the ratio from the Department of Statistics’ (DoS) latest numbers, which said that out of the 6.6 million people in Jordan who hold Jordanian passports, 178,000 are engineers. Therefore, according to the DoS data, one in every 40 Jordanians is an engineer, he said.

Ahmad Zou’bi, the JEA president, said that there are too many engineers for the number of available jobs.

"All engineering specialties and subspecialties are saturated based on the Jordanian and global labour markets’ demands,’’ he said in a statement posted on the JEA website. 

The saturation is due to the increasing numbers of youth studying engineering at universities and the decrease in job opportunities due to the pandemic-induced lockdowns locally and globally, according to the JEA website.

During 2020, the JEA managed to find 438 job opportunities locally and 173 opportunities abroad, in addition to 2,466 training opportunities for engineering graduates, according to the website.

Zou’bi advised Tawjihi (General Secondary Education Certificate Examination) graduates to consider the labour market’s demands before signing up for an undergraduate programme. He also added that there are some engineering specialties highly needed in the labour market now.

According to the JEA bulletin, Architect Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering are fully saturated based on the market’s demands.

In total, the JEA has managed to find 24,086 job opportunities for engineers abroad in addition to 20,371 in the Kingdom. 

"I’ve been unemployed for over three years. I studied Industrial Engineering at the University of Jordan and went to the United Kingdom to get my master’s. Every time I apply for a job, I’m either over qualified for the junior positions because of my master’s, or I lack the necessary skills for the senior positions,” Sara Mahmaoud, an Industrial Engineer, told The Jordan Times.

Ahmad Masa’deh told The Jordan times that he took human resources courses during his bachelor’s degree, which have helped him find a job easily after graduating.