A new report from Engineers Australia has revealed Australia is failing to produce enough home-grown engineers and is overly-reliant on overseas talent, creating a potentially unstable workforce.

Engineer’s Australia’s 2017 State of the Engineering Profession report found that the percentage of Australian students studying STEM subjects has fallen in recent years, creating an impending shortage of graduating engineers.

The number of boys studying advanced maths at high school dropped from 15.9% in 2001 to 11.5% in 2015, while girls studying intermediate maths dropped from 30.9% to 20.6%

“Australia must do more to produce engineers, especially if it is to meet national ambitions to become a more productive and innovative nation,” the report says.

Although the number of engineers graduating from Australian universities has slowly increased during the past decade, the report warns this trend is about to reverse.

“There has been a substantial fall in the number of school students accepting places in university engineering courses in each of the past two years and this will soon follow with an alarming drop in course completions which will lead to a broken pipeline of future engineers,” the report says.

The report recommends better promoting of the engineering ‘brand’ as a way to counter this.

Additionally, the report says dependence on skilled migrants has become unbalanced – 70% of ‘new supply’ is from overseas, and only 30% is from Australian graduates.

“An innovative, technically based and productive economy depends on a highly educated, technically oriented work force. Australia’s engineering capability is an indispensable element for Australia to achieve this ambition and should be valued by policy makers and the community for this reason,” the report says.

“It is unlikely that Australia will ever be in a position to do without skilled migration but developing our national innovative and technical capacity requires us to do more to develop our own engineers and make best use of the skilled migrants willing and able to move to our shores. 

The recently announced abolishing of the 457 visa has added to this potential instability, although engineering is not amoung one of the 216 occupations no longer eligible for temporary visa status.  

The report also lists an ageing workforce and a lack of gender diversity as areas of concern for the profession. In 2011, 28% of the engineering labour force was aged 50 or older, and many may have retired in the last five years. Women account for just 12.4% of the engineering profession.