Career Trends: Health and Safety Engineers

Health and safety engineers develop procedures and design systems to prevent people from getting sick or injured and to keep property from being damaged. They combine knowledge of systems engineering and of health and safety to make sure that chemicals, machinery, software, furniture, and other consumer products will not cause harm to people or damage to buildings.

Health and safety engineers typically work in offices. However, they also must spend time at worksites when necessary, which sometimes requires travel.

Health and safety engineers must have a bachelor’s degree, typically in an engineering discipline such as electrical, chemical, mechanical, industrial, or systems engineering.

Employment of health and safety engineers is projected to grow 6 percent from 2014 to 2024, about as fast as the average for all occupations. Although manufacturing and construction companies will still be among the leading users of their services, health and safety engineers are being employed in new areas to prevent costly accidents involving people and equipment.

This occupation supported 24,100 jobs in 2012 and 25,200 jobs in 2014, reflecting an increase of 4.6%. In 2012, this occupation was projected to increase by 10.8% in 2022 to 26,700 jobs. As of 2014, to keep pace with prediction, the expected number of jobs was 24,600, compared with an observed value of 25,200, 2.4% higher than expected. This indicates current employment trends are better than the 2012 trend within this occupation. In 2014, this occupation was projected to increase by 6.6% in 2024 to 26,800 jobs. Linear extrapolation of the 2012 projection for 2022 results in an expected number of 27,200 jobs for 2024, 1.5% higher than the 2014 projection for 2024. This indicates expectations for future employment trends are about on track with the 2012 trend within this occupation.