On November 15, 2021, President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) which provides $548 billion in new federal infrastructure spending over the next five years. The legislation also allots $650 billion for existing infrastructure spending over the same period. The table below shows how the new monies will be spent.
According to U.S. government statistics, as of May 2022, $110 billion has been released for 4,300 IIJA- funded projects now underway. In June $1 billion in grants was awarded to 85 airports throughout the country to support a variety of new construction and modernization projects. Reviewing the allocation of dollars from the IIJA to specific project types indicates that the demand for civil engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, environmental engineers and project managers could make an already tight labor market even tighter. One recent survey found that nearly 60 percent of firms experienced project delays because of labor shortages.
The American Council of Engineering Companies Research Institute predicts that the bill will create 82,000 engineering jobs and forecasts that engineering and design services economic output will grow annually from $338 billion in 2020 to $433 billion in 2026 — $21 billion greater than it would have been without the jobs act. The ACEC’s numbers, based on a study of 600 firms, found a shortage of engineering professionals with almost one-third of respondents indicating that their firm had more than 10 openings and 90 percent having at least one opening.