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Electrical Engineering Employment Declines Nearly 10%, But Developers Up 12%

Posted by samzenpus on from the end-of-the-engineer dept.

dcblogs writes The number of people working as electrical engineers declined by 29,000 last year, continuing a long-standing trend, according to government data. But the number of software developers, the largest IT occupational category, increased by nearly 12%,or a gain of 132,000 jobs. There were 1.235 million people working as software developers last year, and 271,000 electrical engineers, according U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

1 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This statistic is misleading by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's not bullshit. They really are to some extent different occupations. The guy that designs power grids for a city can't necessarily design an IC and doesn't need to. To him, ICs are components that are on circuit assemblies that are inside systems that he cares about. The IC designer likewise doesn't need to know how to design a power grid. He doesn't even need to know when to use a Y vs. a delta transformer. In fact, he never uses transformers, except to couple RF signals onto the test boards for the ICs he's designing. Power comes from a regulator chip for him, not from a gas-fired generator.

    But you get the same nominal degree to do both jobs.

    Here's actual data from the BLS:
    17-2060 Computer Hardware Engineers broad 77,670
    17-2070 Electrical and Electronics Engineers broad 303,450

    But the 17-2060 and 17-2070 categories mostly have BSEE degrees, some of them also holding MSEE and PhD's.

    Then there's the software folks:
    15-1130 Software Developers and Programmers broad 1,442,500
    15-1140 Database and Systems Administrators and Network Architects broad 618,480
    15-1150 Computer Support Specialists broad 706,360
    15-1190 Miscellaneous Computer Occupations broad 196,280

    So yeah, there are a lot more people doing software. It figures. A relatively few people are required to figure out how to make electrical and electronic hardware. A lot of that hardware consists of programmable machines that can in principle be programmed to do anything. Naturally there are more things to do with computer hardware than there are needs for different kinds of electronic hardware.

    Perspective: I'm an electronics engineer and manager of several of the same. We're staying busy.