Meanwhile, the latest Clarius Skills Index soften slightly for the profession over the December quarter, down from 104.9 to 103.4, and flagged some emerging – and sometime contradictory – trends in the sector.

The benchmark Engineers Australia survey (purchase) covers more than 130,000 employees across 383 public- and private-sector engineering employers. Its findings reflect underlying fluctuations in the engineering labour market.

"We’re hearing a lot of anecdotal information about major infrastructure and resource projects being deferred or delayed. It’s likely that this dip in salaries is evidence of employers adapting to changing market conditions," said Engineers Australia CEO Stephen Durkin.

"A large proportion of Australia’s engineering workforce is employed in delivering major infrastructure projects, and record infrastructure spending has created an unprecedented demand for engineers, especially across the resources sector.

"With such a large engineering workforce employed in infrastructure delivery, even a small downturn can have a major effect on the workforce."

A skills shortage has been identified as one of the strategic issues for the water industry (see Related Stories, right), which along with most others has lost professionals to the mining industry. But Clarius singled out changes in the mining industry as a key to the softening index, in particular a transition from construction to production phases.

A flat economy is also stifling demand for architects and construction engineers. Paul Barbaro, executive GM of the SouthTech division within Clarius Group, said two major construction companies in Sydney have basically shut down recruitment as they’re not seeing any projects on the horizon.

He did highlight one bright spot, being the ongoing demand for engineers who can sell project capabilities. "Experienced sales engineers who can go in and sell engineering concepts and develop new ways of building certain parts of projects are sought after. And when projects are put to tender, engineers able to speak in detail on how they would go about building it are in demand."

Durkin warned about the broader dangers of the boom/bust infrastructure cycles seen in recent years.

"Simply put, the political cycle and the infrastructure delivery cycle need to be as separate as possible. Coming into election season, infrastructure delivery should not be treated like a political football; there are too many jobs at stake," he said.

"All Australian governments have a major role to play, and each has a responsibility to maintain a coordinated and integrated critical list of infrastructure projects. Ad hoc project delivery has the potential to create major effects across our economy."

Without a greater focus on project pipelines, Durkin argued engineers will either leave the profession or seek work overseas, which "is a real risk for Australia as we aim to transition from a resource-based economy to a high-tech, high value economy".

The Clarius Skills Index found they are already leaving Western Australia. Barbaro said anecdotal evidence suggested professionals were heading home to the east coast.

"Salaries being offered in the west have sometimes outstripped those on the east coast by between 20 per cent and 40 per cent, but WA’s rising cost of living has more than made up for the gap," he said.

Despite EA's negative salary findings, the index flagged a national shortfall of 4500 engineers in December. One impact, according to Barbaro, will be a shift to permanent roles for engineers over contract roles.

"In the past, companies employed engineers on fixed-term contracts for six or 12 months, or two years. Now, with a persistence shortage of professionals, those same companies are securing permanent staff to lock in their talent pool for the long haul," he said.

It also flagged a return to work of mature aged engineers, noting "there’s a bigger number of mature aged engineers looking to work than there are younger engineers coming into the sector".