S.C. is engineer-rich
Staff Report
Columbia Regional Business Journal
Published Nov. 21, 2008
Numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics show that South Carolina ranks among the top five states for employment in several important engineering occupations.
In three categories ? chemical engineers, health and safety engineers and industrial engineers ? South Carolina has the second-highest employment concentration of engineers in the nation. South Carolina ranks fourth in the nation for employment concentration of nuclear engineers.
"South Carolina has a long history of being home to companies that depend on engineers, from Eastman to GE to Duke Energy," Commerce Secretary Joe Taylor said.
Also in the nuclear energy field, South Carolina ranks first in the nation in employment concentration for nuclear power operators and nuclear technicians. This trend is expected to continue with announcements like URS Corp. Washington Division in March. The company is opening its nuclear energy headquarters in Lancaster County and plans to create 400 engineering jobs in the next few years.
In the past two years, Cytec Industries, DuPont, Rollcast Energy, Eastman Chemical, Sandvik and BMW have all announced new facilities or expansions of existing operations in the Palmetto State.
Other companies, such as Milliken and General Electric Co., continue to add engineering jobs to their operations within the state. South Carolina is home to large engineering companies such as Fluor, CH2M Hill (Lockwood Greene), Jacobs Engineering and others.
Some other engineering areas in which South Carolina compares favorably to the rest of the nation:
? Second in the nation in concentration of team assemblers.
? Third in the nation for inspectors, testers, sorters, samplers and weighers.
? Fourth in the nation for industrial engineering technicians.
Companies have access to the research institutions of Clemson University's Advanced Materials Center and the International Center for Automotive Research, the University of South Carolina's Electrochemical Engineering Center and the Savannah River National Laboratory.
