The state of any economy is precarious at best.
And the letters "P.E." have been proven to carry commercial value when the job market gets tight, as unlicensed engineers in New York were a bit late to discover in the early 1990s, when they were caught in the national downsizing trend among large companies.

Numerous engineers in the state who were laid off by employers had the chance to be hired back on a part-time basis or as consultants.
But working in either capacity required a license.
Many engineers who wanted to take advantage of the opportunity called the New York State Board for Engineering and Land Surveying, to ask whether their engineering experience would enable them to bypass the exams and go directly to licensure.
The answer was no.

And in plotting the recovery of their careers, those engineers discovered that they had made some other pretty serious—and common—miscalculations.
The more experience they had, the more time they needed to invest in studying the technical material on which they would be tested, because they had been out of school for so long.
And the greater the passage of time since college graduation, the greater their chances of failing the exam.

That's because time dulls the sharpness of test-taking skills.
While the FE tests basic engineering concepts and mathematics, the PE tests an engineer's ability to assimilate math and the physical sciences and apply that assimilation to a problem.
While experienced engineers have the knowledge to pass the exam, they likely don't have the ability to explain the solution in the time allotted to finish either exam, particularly the PE.

In 1994, 63 percent of mechanical engineers who took the PE exam failed.
In 1995, the failure rate was close to 65 percent.
Although the failure rate improved by 1998, more than half of those engineers who took the exam that year—57 percent—failed.

While waivers for the FE are granted occasionally by states, waivers for the PE exam are rarely granted,
A survey of the state licensing offices, the most recent one done by NCEES, showed that only 13 of the 55 U.S. jurisdictions that issue licenses have a provision for long-established practice.
And of those 13, only three—Louisiana, North Carolina, and Ohio—require fewer than 10 years of experience to grant the waiver.

Along with the state of the economy, several other factors have been known to influence the number of engineers taking the FE and PE exams.

The high number of industry exemptions contributes to the decline of licensed engineers.
Although those exemptions are considerable for most engineering disciplines, in Texas and New York, for example, the number of exemptions is highest among electrical and mechanical engineers.

Although outreach to industry would likely yield the same positive result as the outreach to academia, extending that outreach would be far more daunting because few companies see an immediate economic benefit.
Having licensed engineers on staff would minimize the potential to experience the kinds of ethical problems that can create costly liability problems for companies
However, industry tends to want to minimize all regulatory requirement.

The benefits of reducing, if not eliminating, industry exemptions in favor of increased licensure would have to be slowly spoon-fed to industry.

Two states have started to take steps down that path.
Louisiana has worked on limiting industry exemptions.
Missouri has talked about it.

The emergence of ABET 2000, a revised list of requirements that colleges and universities must meet before their engineering programs can be accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, will have a more direct and lasting impact on the number of engineers taking the FE.
ABET 2000 calls for institutions of learning to do more student assessment.
While the schools will decide what assessment tools to use to measure student performance, the FE is an obvious one.

And NCEES is exploring ways to work with academia to heighten the awareness of using the FE to help institutions of higher learning satisfy the outcomes assessment that is required under the revised ABET 2000.