Obama is trying to address the nation's persistently high unemployment level by boosting the number of people with skills in areas where unemployment is relatively low. Engineering fits that bill.

The unemployment rate in 2010 for all engineers was 4.5%. For software engineers it was 4.6%, and for all computing professionals, 5.4%, according to U.S. Labor Department data analyzed by the IEEE-USA.

"We've made incredible progress on education, helping students to finance their college educations, but we still ," said Obama, who has compared the U.S. educational needs to those following the 1957 .

The U.S. had just over 1.9 million engineers in 2010, according to Labor Department data. Software engineers make up nearly half of that total. The number of declined during the recession.

Obama, who outlined the goal on Monday, said the idea is to achieve the 10,000-engineer-increase without "a whole bunch of federal funding."