A coming engineering shortage ? ---- Who agrees ? 86

[MJCronin]

A recent article says that there will be an acute shortage ... particularly in the electrical field !!!

http://www.csemag.com/single-articl...hortage/7b350ef419c231a9f82abc6c8bd8fac4.html

Who agrees ???

Who strongly disagrees ???

MJCronin
Sr. Process Engineer

 

[IRstuff]

"would not discourage talented people from joining our ranks"

That's the challenge, though, isn't it? We certainly don't want to discourage talent, but we do want to discourage the untalented and incompetent.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[ManifestDestiny]

In some ways I was unlucky, the employer dangled the " green card" sponsorship for a while, than management changed, tried to find an alternative employer with a new H1B but without success. The only avenue for me at the time was to continue as a PhD but found little incentive to that.

Was that before the E3 visa? In 2005 I think it was when we did a free trade deal with the US, George Bush threw in a sweetener in the form of the E3 visa specifically for Australians. Apparently it was for being a part of the "Coalition of the willing" and sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq.

So long as you've got a degree they pretty much let you straight in. Fear not though Americans, we are JUST as greedy as you all are when it comes to salary

 

[cranky108]

Greedy? At the current salary levels, I like being able to just pick where I want to live.

And maybe that's the issue, some of us don't like living in some of the hell holes that exist, no matter what they pay.

 

[spraytechnology]

I did my stint in US late 90s early 2000, back home we started seeing the resource boom and AUD appreciation. Nowadays I am picky where I want to live and FIFO is no longer an option. Also can't beat our outback either with any seppo.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

David0,

What are you talking about rising engineering wage?


The flat portion of this graph is rising slower than inflation.

https://www.naceweb.org/job-market/...-starting-salaries-for-new-college-graduates/

 

[DavidKite]

HamburgerHelper,

Thanks for sharing the link! I'm unable to replicate your plot from the website data. Can you elaborate on the source of the data for your plot? Figure 4 of the website shows adjusted increases that doesn't match.

Quoting from last sentence in first paragraph: "Overall, in real terms, bachelor’s degree level salaries have risen 5.9 percent since 1960."

Under the appendix section Figure 11 for Electrical Engineers, There are 4 columns of data: Year, Reported Average Starting Salary, Percent Change, Adjusted Average Starting Salary, Percent Change. For convenience, I've plotted just the salaries below.

If we consider just the recent (unadjusted) data, starting Electrical Engineer salary in 2005 was $51,773 while in 2015 it was $67,593. That looks like rising wage to me.

[URL unfurl="true"]http://imgur.com/gf1J2Xx[/url]

[URL unfurl="true"]http://imgur.com/y9D9C82[/url]

 

[HamburgerHelper]

David0,

From $51,773 to $67,593 over a ten year spend comes to 2.6% annually. Basically, inflation. Maybe, less depending on how you calculate inflation. There is nothing rising about that.

 

[DavidKite]

HamburgerHelper,

From $51,773 to $67,593 over a ten year spend comes to 2.6% annually. Basically, inflation.

Yup! It's rising with inflation more or less.

Returning to the side question: is there a shortage/glut of cars? The price would fluctuate with the economy (like salaries). I would say close to matching inflation means there is no shortage or glut of car (see below) or engineers. The engineering labor market is doing OK.

Over the history of the automobile, inflation-adjusted price to 2013
[URL unfurl="true"]https://simanaitissays.com/2013/04/22/new-car-math/[/url]

 

[IRstuff]

"From $51,773 to $67,593 over a ten year spend comes to 2.6% annually. Basically, inflation."


The corrected data says there's a 0.8% per year rise above the inflation rate; it beats being flat AFTER inflation.

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[spraytechnology]

Gents, you are all beating a dead horse. The only material advantage doing engineering work ( if done indeed) is, that is ...interesting. Everything else ( with few exceptions and luck )pale in comparison.

 

[ManifestDestiny]

The data is interesting. It suggests to me that there certainly isn't a shortage, but the situation is probably not as dire as some folks here suggest.

I remember there was a statement made by Allan Greenspan about 10 years ago about income inequality. His solution was absurd, but not unsurprising from the captain of parasitic free market capitalism

We ought to be opening up our borders to skilled labour from all parts of the world because if we were to do that we would increase the supply of skilled workers that our schools have been unable to create and as a consequence of that we would lower the average wage of skills and reduce the degree of income inequality in this country.

http://archive.boston.com/news/nati.../14/greenspan_let_more_skilled_immigrants_in/

That was pretty much the call to corporate America to turn their lobbying efforts towards immigration and open borders. Of course there was no mention of the biggest causes of inequality, like a tax code that favours capital over labour, excessive executive remuneration, wall street bankers, or you know, trying to help those at the bottom get better wages.

 

[IRstuff]

"reduce the degree of income inequality in this country"

It's like when I use the align command in Mathcad. The tops of objects that are high move down, and the tops of the objects that are low move up.

The issue is that those curves show that other professions and jobs are either completely stagnant or actually decreasing in real dollars. Adding more STEM workers will do the same to engineering. But, as usual, there are still those that stubbornly believe in supply-side economics, even though it's been disproven, over and over.

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[moltenmetal]

Quite the opposite is true, IRstuff. In real dollar terms, in Ontario, engineering was once on par with law and medicine. It is now on par with teaching.

 

[cranky108]

Interesting play with numbers, but does it prove anything? Yes there has been inflation, and the method of calculating inflation has changes by the government to reduce transfer payments, mostly Social Securty in the US. So not all of the inflation is in the official inflation numbers. So what do the numbers prove?

Actually, in my mind, bringing in engineers from other parts of the world will increase the demand from other countries, and should increase wages. What actually happens is that schools try to push through more engineers, by lowering the quality of the education. So we see more non-functional engineers, and wages go down.

Quantity over quality. That is what is happening. Garbage engineers who can't do the work.

We also see that in government regulations to mandate a structured flow process so as to reduce the need for thinking engineers. I.E. we are being replaced by computers and administrators.

 

[IssacFreeman]

I don't quite understand why there's going to be a shortage? Unless they refer to classic engineers (male with glasses)? There's a big push to get girls in STEM and even when I am going to school, the demog is definitely expanding to allow the fairer sex to participate.

Conversely, though, a lot of my classmates end up NOT being engineers, i.e. they got sucked into high-tech jobs, as engineers have a lot of transferable skills to other industries (management, tech, marketing..etc.).

What I can also add, anecdotally is that a lot of EE roles are being developed overseas. So there is a lot lower demand here in NA for hardware EE, as work are being outsourced overseas.

Not a lot of answers, just more observations.

 

[spraytechnology]

The trend is and has been for few years now, a shortage of good quality well paying engineering jobs in certain countries.

 

[DSB123]

My son wanted to follow in my footsteps and take and engineering degree. I managed to persuade him not to. Engineering, in the UK, will be finished in a round 5 years. The problem is that all of the large Companies are opening offices in third world countries and transferring the work there. They think that the third world engineering is acceptable but in reality it is crap!!!. After opening these third world offices they pay off the workers in the UK but then realise that they still need people so they bring engineers over from the third world offices with the excuse that they could not find any engineers in the UK. This is a blatent lie. All they are after is cheap labour!!! This activity stinks. Third world engineers will work for lower money. That is why engineering will be dead in the UK in around 5 years along with the fact that the younger engineers are not getting any training as training budgets are being cut all of the time.

 

[IRstuff]

LOL, you think that company training still exists? Other than mandatory training, we haven't had company-provided training in nearly 20 years.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[spraytechnology]

DSB You must remember and compliment Reagan and Thacher peace upon them!

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=416967

 

[CWB1]

JMO but given recent politics which I care not discuss here I hold hope for significant manufacturing growth in both the US and UK over the next few years, a manufacturing renaissance if you will. Here stateside we certainly spent many years doing similar outsourcing of professional positions to India/China/etc along with importing their labor but I've seen much of that work returning in recent years due to cost vs ability tradeoffs at several companies. Politely stated, the cost to hire qualified engineering staff in low cost countries hasn't produced any real cost savings vs US personnel and hiring cheaper labor has proven a long-term money-loser due to quality, development speed, and other issues.

As for continual training and career growth opportunities, if you aren't getting them and have no financial obligation to stay (pension, ownership, etc) then move on, there's far too many good employers to stand by those that are dying. JME but if someone hopes to get into advanced technology development they need to find a company with a strong forward-thinking training and development program, with the proprietary nature of analysis you simply wont get decent FEA or CFD training elsewhere.