380,847
engineers a year.That is how many more America would graduate at China’s rate.

Engineering (CIP 14) + Computer & Information Sciences (CIP 11), first majors, bachelor’s degrees only. The China benchmark is a bachelor’s-equivalent figure, a share of first university degrees, so both sides of the comparison count the same thing. Through v1.1 the American share used an associate + bachelor’s denominator against that same bachelor’s-only benchmark, which overstated the gap; v1.2 corrects it. The old method put the national shortfall at 739,994; on the current data and the 33.2% benchmark it is 380,847. Associate-level output is still reported per state (the associate-degree figure) because community colleges are where Digital ROTC applies: the program covers two years of study with loans forgiven after service at a community college, and those years can end in an associate degree or transfer into the bachelor’s pipeline this index measures. The associate-level figures are shown here but are not mixed into the benchmark. The institution tables are bachelor’s-only, matching the state totals they sit beside. Three-year average (AY 2022–23 through 2024–25, the newest federal data available; the 2024–25 file is provisional until NCES revises it) from the U.S. Dept. of Education’s IPEDS Completions survey, every degree-granting institution in America. Per-capita figures use Census Vintage 2025 state population estimates.

Institutions where ≥80% of undergraduates study exclusively online (WGU, SNHU, UMGC, Univ. of Phoenix, Univ. of the People…) are excluded from state totals: their graduates are national, not state-based. Without this correction Utah would rank near the top on WGU’s output alone. Online flags use the most recent IPEDS distance-education survey (fall 2024; the fall 2025 file is not yet released). The uncorrected variant is published in the dataset for transparency.

China: engineering accounted for 33.2% of bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2022 (1,565,928 of 4,715,658, computer science included as China classifies it), per the PRC Ministry of Education’s own published statistics, the most recent discipline breakdown Beijing has released. Two independent checks land on the same rate: NSF NCSES Science & Engineering Indicators Figure HED-30 puts China at 32.8% of first university degrees in 2020, and the MOE’s 2021 table shows 32.78%. China reports no field-of-study data to UNESCO or the OECD, so no international compilation runs past 2020; the MOE tables do. The benchmark is degrees awarded, which is what IPEDS counts, and bachelor’s-equivalent, which is what this index measures; the American data runs through 2024–25 because that is what each side publishes. Through v1.2 the benchmark was 36%, taken from undergraduate entrants choosing engineering; a similar 36.6% figure is China’s share of doctoral degrees in engineering (Figure TAL-43, 2022). Neither is a bachelor’s completion rate. Because provincial counting is inconsistent, results are also quoted at a conservative 25% (a national shortfall of 231,742 degrees a year) and at a deep discount of 20%, where it is 140,824; the charts plot the 33.2% benchmark alone. Both rates are below what allied democracies post: Germany 27.7% and South Korea 25.8% engineering + CS share of first university degrees, with France at 17.9%, India at 15.0% and Japan at 14.5% (NSF NCSES Figure HED-30, 2020, the newest international compilation; CS is folded into engineering for Japan as for China; NSF’s OECD-classified US figure on the same basis is 13.0%, vs the 12.3% IPEDS CIP 14 + 11 figure used everywhere else on this page). This is a production index: it measures where engineers are trained, not where they live or work.

Share measures what a system chooses to produce, so it is the fair metric for a country with a large higher-education sector that also graduates nurses, teachers and accountants. But the conclusion does not depend on the denominator. NSF counts about 2 million science and engineering first university degrees for China in 2020 against America’s 900,000, and roughly 70% of China’s are engineering. Call it 1.4 million engineers a year against our 222,848. That is more than six times as many outright, and population-adjusted it is still roughly half again as many per resident. The gap holds whether it is measured by share, per capita or raw headcount.

The layoff headlines concentrate in one corner of the market: entry-level hiring at consumer software companies. The demand base is much wider. BLS projections put annual openings across engineering, computer and engineering-technician occupations at about 467,000 a year (growth plus replacement; most openings are retirements and exits, which do not pause for a hiring cycle). Against that, the country produces roughly 223,000 eng+CS bachelor’s degrees and 42,000 associate degrees a year: a little more than half of openings covered, counting every two-year credential. Employers in defense, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing and the power grid face those numbers regardless of what consumer tech does this quarter.

Each state page compares degree output with the state’s own labor-market projection: average annual openings, 2024–2034, for engineers (SOC 17-2), computer occupations (SOC 15-12) and engineering technicians (SOC 17-3), as published by each state’s labor agency and aggregated by Projections Central (Projections Managing Partnership, U.S. Dept. of Labor). Openings follow the BLS method: growth plus replacement of workers who retire or transfer out. Because technicians are the associate-degree tier, coverage is measured against associate + bachelor’s degrees, not the bachelor’s-only figure the ranking uses. Summed across the states, that is openings a year against degrees: coverage. (BLS’s own national 2023–33 projection, quoted above, is ~467,000; the states’ 2024–34 projections run a little higher.) Coverage is a demand-side check on the benchmark gap, not a substitute for it: a state can cover most of its openings and still be far below the China benchmark, and high coverage in a thin economy is a sign of weak demand, not strong production. Only one state, Vermont, graduates more than it is projected to hire.