Few Electrical Engineers: Alarm

There is the demographic crisis biting, an increasingly rapid energy transition, alongside a profound transformation of production models. In the epochal changes that the labour market is also undergoing, there is a phenomenon that is no longer negligible: companies are unable to find the talent they need.

The levels reached are very high: more than two thirds of Italian companies with ongoing personnel searches, 69.8% to be exact, recalled a very in-depth focus by Confindustria in December, now encounter significant difficulties in finding the necessary skills. Starting with the scientific-technological ones. And if this is the general picture of the alert, if we focus the lens on a specific profile, today fundamental in the labour market, namely electrical engineers, we realise how serious the problem really is, and, in this case, also dependent on the training side. In 2023, in fact, according to the latest available data contained in a paper by the Study Centre of the National Engineers' Council Foundation, there were only 528 master's degree graduates in electrical engineering (equal to 2% of all master's degree graduates in engineering), the same number as in 2022, but around 60 fewer than in 2018. Against an estimated demand from companies of at least five times as many.

Enrolment has also been more or less stable for several years now, downwards: around 30/40 students per university, but with a success rate (over 80%) that is substantially high in the Italian engineering scenario. There is, however, a strong gender gap, with women accounting for around 20%, a factor that is, unfortunately, typical for all Stem disciplines. Not only that. According to available data from the statistics office of the Ministry of Universities and Research, the 2023 graduates in electrical engineering come from 14 universities in all, but more than half come from just three universities: the Politecnico di Milano (which is the main training centre for electrical engineers with 133 graduates in 2023), the University of Padua (70 graduates) and the Alma Mater in Bologna (65 graduates).

Testifying to their employment success is one fact above all others: one year after graduating, electrical engineers have an unemployment rate of just 3.3%, an almost insignificant value that can be defined as 'physiological', slightly higher than the corresponding rate for all master's degree graduates in industrial and information engineering (2.8%), but decidedly lower than the unemployment rate for the entire universe of graduates (10.5%). A paradox within a paradox given that electricity is the driving force behind the transition to a more sustainable energy system.

In short, the alarm is serious: the low number of electrical graduates is now a reality in all Italian universities, even where there are leading industrial presences in the international energy sector or the numerous manufacturing companies in the electrical sector in Emilia-Romagna, Veneto and Lazio, to name but a few examples.