Janet and I will both admit that we never said when growing up that we wanted to be safety professionals. We both found our ways to this career. In a time when businesses were cutting staff (and maybe still are), we saw many colleagues laid off or changing companies. Now, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health has published a study showing there will be a shortage of safety professionals. They estimate employers will hire 25,000 occupational health and safety professionals over the next 5 years, but only 12,000 will be graduating from safety programs.
The low graduation rate may be partially due to reduced funding for programs (to the schools and scholarships). As I have noted before, safety impacts a company’s bottom line. To have a cost-effective, cost saving, effective safety program, it helps to have a qualified safety staff.
Here is the link to the study on NIOSH’s website. The executive summary starts on page 15.