Approximately 8.9 percent of the nation’s nonfarm wage and salary employment was in the manufacturing sector in 2010; whereas, the percentage of manufacturing employment in the Wichita metro area was 18.5 percent. Consequently, one would suspect that the high concentration of manufacturing in the Wichita metro area might also indicate a larger representation of engineers, compared to other metropolitan areas. In an effort to determine the validity of that assumption, the Center for Economic Development and Business Research gathered and analyzed engineering and population data for 363 metropolitan statistical areas.
The resulting article is an update to a previous article that analyzed 188 metropolitan areas.