Engineering is Going Overseas - Goodbye Jobs 55

[havesealwilltravel]

A friend of mine sent me the following link:

http://www.ieeeusa.org/forum/POLICY/2003/061803.html

It is depressing but true. The current high unemployment among engineers is going to continue and not only that it will get worse.

One of the threads in this forum concerns itself with encouraging women to go into engineering. If you care about the person, be honest with them (and yourself). Engineering as a career for a large number of people is over. A bright young person would be smarter to pursue another profession.

I don't believe that a person is born an engineer and will only be happy if they become an engineer. Obviously, if current trends continue, a lot of engineers are going to have to seek happiness in another career if they want to earn a living.

Globalization is good only for individuals with substantial capital to invest overseas. For the rest of us who work for a living it has done nothing but lower wages and increase unemployment.

Please read the article !!!!!!!

 

[TheTick]

Quoted from the thread, "Whither Engineering Education".
thread730-63608

"...The downhill drive of research and development is well seen. At best, we are copycats of west. Just copying their manufacture and producing it at lower cost (at low wages)is no engineering and is sure to take us down..."


The best way to save American jobs is by American innovation and American excellence. Who among us is personally committed to this principle? Say it once, say it loud!

Good and evil: wrap them up and disguise it as people.

 

[arunmrao]

There is an interesting verbal expletives going on in google sci.eng.metallurgy.It is regarding outsourcing a gear from China at 20$ as against its US cost of 300$.So all of you for and against can join in this interesting discussion.

http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=...?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=sci.engr.metallurgy

 

[havesealwilltravel]

TheTick

I salute your enthusiasm. I don't think it's that simple. Most corporate decisions are made based on price. And I'm sure you are extremely hard working and pride yourself in performing an excellent level of work. But when management can hire 4 mediocre foreign engineers for the same rate as you. I don't think you stand a chance.

Unfortunately, engineering talent is viewed by most people as a commodity. Commodity purchases are determined mainly by price.

Also, as the status and pay of engineering goes down, so does the quality of the young men and women engineering attracts. Engineering as a profession no longer attracts the best and brightest. They are going into medicine and law where they can pursue lifetime careers and not bounce from job to job (or unemployment if they can't find a job).

 

[TheTick]

Well, I've made some good coin cleaning up messes created by Asian engineers. Seems like I've found a niche.

Good and evil: wrap them up and disguise it as people.

 

[funnelguy]

More grist for the mill... the article starts out about IT and programming jobs, but there is a really sobering chart at the bottom with predictions from the US Department of Labor.

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~1547648,00.html

 

[rhodie]

 

[PSE]

Here is some additional information. I am still working through the full report PDF.

http://www.nam.org/secondary.asp?TrackID=&CategoryID=1193

Regards,

 

[flamby]

Please take the note of distinction between Jobs and American Economy. Whatever we manufacture and buy here in India has an "American Brand Tag" and a subtantial sum goes to US companies as a rayalty, without "producing" anything. Offloading manufacture to cheaper places makes economical sense and that's why the outsourcing. Obviously the rayalties outweigh the profit earned if the goods were produced in US and then exported.

Jobs are a different story...

 

[FrenchCAD]

flame

it's not about royalties there, it's more about margins you make on a product, with margin = sell price - production costs.

But I agree, the company X makes more margins by manufacturing its products in Asia than manufacturing them in Europe (West) or US. hence it's economically better for this company to relocate production in Asia.

Royalties are when company X allows company Y to put its logo/name on company Y's products (Typically McDonald's Happy Meals sold with Walt Disney toys)

Cyril Guichard
Mechanical Engineer

 

[flamby]

My point was to show who gets rich. Not an average American, not a lowly paid Asian but a US Multinational company! Wealth will actually be sucked up till we all are EQUALLY POOR!!!

 

[EngineerDave]

Flame wrote "My point was to show who gets rich. Not an average American, not a lowly paid Asian but a US Multinational company! Wealth will actually be sucked up till we all are EQUALLY POOR!!!"

The equally poor thing is the future that I envision in maybe 100 years. This one world economy will actually result in a sort of socialist distribution of wealth as we other economies become propped up as ours falters.

It's pretty scary to thing that capitalism taken to the extreme may have produced a socialist world.

I don't know if I'm using all my terminology correctly, but we can't create jobs in other countries, reduce jobs in our country without the net trend of our economy diminishing and others being uplifted.

THE QUESTION IS WHAT CAN WE DO TO ENSURE A BETTER FUTURE AS ENGINEERS AND HAVE HOPE FOR OUR FUTURE GENERATIONS?

Is the standard of living in the US destined to decline from now on?

 

[duck0601]

EngineerDave,

"What can we do to ensure a better future ...?"

Perhaps I never left the dream state of my teens, but I would suggest going outside some clear night and looking up.

I see a goal.

 

[arunmrao]

Anything in extreme form is unstable and has to collapse ,like Communism in many countries including India. China and N Korea are perhaps the exception. China with its poor track record on human rights, IPR,etc is still wooed by US is baffling. They seem to have completely pervaded US in all spheres and eventually might become the dominant one.

 

[GregLocock]

Star for that ducky.

Meanwhile the Japanese are going to have another go at pumping money into technology, they are thinking about a 30 year program to develop better anthropoid robots, spending about $400 million a year. It is not exactly Apollo, but that is a fair lump of their GDP.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20030820b8.htm

Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[corus]

It is not always true that engineering jobs go overseas per se. In the UK, Japanese cars and Korean trucks may be designed in their countries but manufactured in the UK. Whether this is because those companies have realised that it is cheaper to build and then export in europe or whether it is because UK plants are more efficient than their own, even though the price of labo(u)r may be greater, is debateable. The loss to the UK in these examples is the loss in design engineering requirements although this is offset by a demand for manufacturing skills.
Conversely in the far east there is a demand for foreign design engineering experience in the field of iron and steel making, which they don't have. Again, the demand for design engineers in the UK is offset by the loss of manufacturing jobs in that industry.
Generally if you're in the right industry then there are plenty of job opportunities. If you design rubber ducks, however, then you'd better move to China.

 

[EngineerDave]

Just another article on it...

http://www.msnbc.com/news/947478.asp

 

[funnelguy]

corus,
I think there are other possibilities for reasons Japanese and Korean automakers would build plants in the UK.

First, it may allow the manufacturer to comply with your country's trade restrictions while selling more cars at an acceptable, although somewhat lower, profit margin.

Second, perhaps inefficiencies in shipping complete cars or losses from damage in transport are such that it makes economical sense to assemble in the country of destination.

Third, automobiles are ordered with an array of options. Many cars are custom ordered, so to speak. Perhaps the in transit time would add too much lead time to a customer's delivery and would negatively impact sales.

Personally, I'm guessing it's the first. Were it not for trade restrictions, every car in the world would be made in China. IMO. I look forward to a response from someone in the automotive industry who is knowledgeable about trade restrictions.

 

[Zapster]

The greed of Americans is astonishing. In complaints about jobs going overseas, most of you are trying to blame someone besides yourself. I know that my children will not be able to live a life of excess like most Americans do now. For the 30 years of my adult life, I have recognized that my standard of living far exceeds my contribution to society, as do most Americans. My life has been enriched by the sweat of people from second and third world countries. Currently, the average American has more cars in the driveway than drivers who reside there. Freeways are populated with vehicles that have a single driver. People think that vacations are a right. Our retired population believes it has a right to live independently on the back of the working class, (they say they earned it, I say they stole it from us). Most of the products that I buy are subsidized by the financial and political enslavement of people around the world. Isn’t it great to be an American?

I suggest that if you don’t like the engineering jobs, associated with manufacturing going overseas, work for less money. Do not expect to have the same standard of living that you enjoy now. If that is not acceptable, move overseas and see if you like it there. I here they are hiring engineers there. Just think of the opportunities that you are giving needed people from other countries whey you loose your engineering job. It sounds like you too, want to live off the sweat of people in third world countries like our fathers did. Perhaps you can find a way to propagate the American dream by steeling the future of our youth like our fathers did. Nope, the genie is out of the bottle and in the next twenty years or so most Americans will start being paid what they are worth: A standard of living substantially less than we enjoy now.

The rich just keep getting richer, our middle class keeps getting poorer.

 

[corus]

Funnelguy is correct in most of what he says. I know that Mercedes, for example, build cars in America. I'm sure that the germans complain about their jobs going overseas too.

 

[oldluddite]

When I was last in the US, touring around the deep south (Louisiana, Missippi, Tennersee and Kentucky). I noticed that almost everything you touched was made in China.

My American pal says "this place would collapse without China - everything in Wal Mart is made in China". Even in the antique shop, on a plate I picked up it said 'made in china !'

I did notice however, that on more than one occasion US Engineers were out there explaining their profession to the public - a thing that you hardly ever see in the UK. I must say that I also admired the 'can do' attitude of American engineers who seemed to have more enthusiasm than their counterparts here in England. If you want to see what US engineering industry will be like in 10 years time, come to England !

Its inevitable that manufacturing trade and business will migrate to places where they have the skills, and low costs and wages, and it's inevitable that migrants will want to leave such places for a better life in richer countries. You have just got to live with it.

"Putting Automation into CAD ©"