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Electrical Engineering Employment Declines Nearly 10%, But Developers Up 12%
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.
However, while this might be true for the work roles people are performing, the article at the end shows that EEs have lower unemployment than CSs.
This is my experience: When interviewing EEs and CS degreed employees, I'll chose the EE over CS 9 out of 10 times for a software job. In general they have a stronger grasp of the big picture, hardware, software & firmware. In fact I've been downright disappointed with the level of CS expertise by CS grads lately. It is as if the universities are training them for javascript, web site production, and IT support as apposed to a deep understanding of the CS field.
What we can say about this article is: there are more software than hardware jobs, but EEs are dual purpose, and overall have lower unemployment.
Electrical Engineering is still in demand, if you're willing to travel a lot and be a manager/"architect" type. It is not, however, sustainable as a career, you will forget almost everything important about the field within the first 5 years after leaving college, and then just be another faceless middle manager pushing spreadsheets around. There are a few companies that still want EEs: like em or hate em, Apple hires them and they do actual EE work. Defense still wants them, and signal integrity/RF guys are still in heavy demand (although they must fight the push I note above).
If you want an engineering degree just to get a job and be a corporate drone, it's still a great degree to get. But don't pay a lot of money, your wages will not justify it and you'll end up paying college loans the rest of your life. If you want to be a real engineer, analyze your chances of being in the top 10%, if you don't think you can be or won't work hard enough for it, get out, find something else you enjoy more.
Electrical Engineering is still in demand
Sure, but there are many areas of EE where demand has fallen. Programmable logic has drastically reduced the need for boards full of TTL chips. FPGAs, and even many ASICs, are designed with fully synchronous digital logic, that requires zero knowledge of most EE concepts, and can be done by any kid bright enough to master Verilog/VHDL. My company has done several successful FPGA projects, none of which involved anyone with an EE degree. ADCs, DACs, PWM, and DSPs come built into many microcontrollers, which themselves increasingly come on standard PCBs, with free downloadable libraries to handle all the interfacing.
One of the key parts of the story point out one of the realities of engineering; many engineers work in jobs that are outside of their degree field:P>
Electrical engineers have likely moved into other fields, such as software engineering, or to other engineering areas such as aerospace, or to Wall Street, among other occupations.
While it goes on to say some are no longer employed; with a 2% unemployment rate chances are if you are an EE, looking for an EE job, you have a job.
One of the challenges firms looking to hire engineers, at least a few years back, was competing with non-engineering firms for workers. I remember engineering companies complaining about Wall Street hiring engineers (and scientists) and how horrible that was; well pay salaries like on the Street and you can get all the engineers you want. Shortages of employees is usually from an unwillingness to pay what it takes to get the employees you want rather than a true shortage. That's not always the case but withe employees having had a buyer's market over the last fews years it's usually a safe bet that it is the case.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I'm a working Electrical Engineer. I know at least the domain I have worked in (Systems, PCB, IC package design, Signal Integrity), and i know the reasons I've been trying to recreate myself as a something else, and why doing that that jacked my salary by 30%, in spite of not being qualified for that move.
If I discourage anyone from pursuing this degree, I have done both them a favor, and those who really love this and will do it anyway. Once upon a time I wanted to be an Aerospace Engineer, and at career day someone explained the situation almost exactly as I have. I was angry, thought bad things of them, but they were right, and I listened and did well for myself. In truth, Aerospace Engineering was neat, and I probably would have done fine, but I didn't really love it like my friend who works at (big helo company) loves it and who endures the interminable layoffs and uncertainty.
If you have the intellectual capacity to succeed in this field, chances are you enjoy many things and can succeed in ANY field, you just need the intel to know what the smart decisions are. If you're flexible, then you should exercise that flexibility carefully.
In terms of that article, that's just about placement rate. That doesn't mean you'll get a job you want, or that explains to you why you dealt with years of differential equations, phasors, and the 15th different explanation of the Fourier Transform just so that you can create a spreadsheet that lists outstanding manufacturing defects that Foxconn is responsible for, almost certainly because they insisted on using local part sources rather than those from Western companies that still design things right (what few still exist). The highlight of your career may be creating a powerpoint explaining how to create an engineering model that maximally leverages your western designers to train their replacements in asia, in a fashion that guarantees timely product delivery. This isn't bitterness, this is real life.
I'll give HR the benefit of the doubt and say HR is trying to use a degree as a proxy for the ability to see a project through to completion.