Engineering is one of the hottest majors currently on the job market, right? Well, maybe not. Undoubtedly it is still out-performing most all of the degrees afforded by a four (or five) year stint in college, but public perception may not live up to the reality.
Last year Barack Obama hosted a Google+ Hangout Session wherein he fielded questions from concerned citizens across the country. One such woman was Jennifer Wedel. She was concerned about the job market for her husband Derin, and engineer, and her situation seemed to take Obama a little off guard.
Despite the supposedly fertile ground for engineers right now, Derin simply cannot find a job. Jennifer Wedel questioned Obama's issuing of H1-B visas that allow companies to hire a certain amount of foreigners each year. Rightfully so, she questioned the logic behind this when Americans like her husband are left in the dust.
The President was quick to respond, noting that although not all engineering jobs have equal demand, his industry experts have said that in general there are currently not enough skilled workers to fill these jobs. He goes on: "there's a huge demand around this country for engineers," and "...where you're seeing a lot of specialized demand is in engineering that's related to the high-tech industries."
This is all well and good, except for the fact that Derin Wedel is a semiconductor engineer, one of the most highly technical and skilled engineering positions available. Obama was understandably stumped.
So what's the real story behind the market for engineering majors currently? Undoubtedly, the outlook is still very good, just not as good as we may have thought. In 2011 the unemployment rate for engineers was at an impressive 5.1% (as compared to 8.9% for the nation that same year). However, that number was three times as high as the 1.7% unemployment rate the engineering field saw in 2006.
So what's going on here? Wedel worked at Texas Instruments for nine years before his plant got shut down. After that he obtained a nine month stint as a temp before that plant also closed. The answer may lie overseas.
A 2010 report from the Center for Public Policy Innovation points to the industry moving abroad, with global semiconductor production capacity of the U.S. dropping a sizable 11 percent between 2005 and 2009. Combine that with measures like the H1-B visa that attract foreign talent (that we supposedly need), and it seems as if more and more engineers these days are simply getting outsourced for cheaper.
Economist Jared Bernstein witnessed the birth of H1-B firsthand as a member of President Obama's economic team. "They want all the engineers they can get at the lowest price," he said. "They say they can't find enough talent, but what they really mean is that they can't find enough people at the rate they want to pay."
