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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.

13 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. The profession is in decline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's be honest about this. Electrical engineering can now be outsourced fully, as companies do not see the value in EE or more importantly that the skills are transferable to other areas such as programming. Furthermore, ageism is rampant in most of the technical field now, as HR types will want to hire someone their own age.

    1. Re:The profession is in decline by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:The profession is in decline by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:The profession is in decline by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  2. But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS by taharvey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If I was hiring programmers, I would be very inclined to hire real engineers (of any stripe) than degreed "computer scientists"

      When I started college, only a few Universities in the country even offered CS degrees. Most of my education was in engineering.

      Having said that, I am employed as a software engineer, not as EE or Computer Engineer, as I had originally planned. Even so, I don't think many engineers would automatically make good programmers. Even today, despite claims to the contrary, much of programming is still as much art as science.

      "Flipping the order of a linked list" might show that someone has rudimentary skill, but it doesn't demonstrate any degree of mastery.

    2. Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 3

      programming is almost 0 art unless you're working in C or some other language that deals with direct memory access.

      This is only true if your talking about relatively simple tasks. When you have a large, complex software project, often using several different components and languages, yes it's as much art as science. It isn't all just quicksort vs insertion sort and data structures and the like. You learn tricks, and you use them. And sometimes they're language-specific.

      If you don't understand that, then you probably haven't been doing any of that kind of software project.

      In general, business plans don't succeed on clever code.

      Correct. It's the clever things you DO with the code. Just ask Google.

    3. Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS by lgw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In real production code these days, "maintainable code" is what matters. Sure, on very rare occasions you'll google some algorithm you vaguely remember form college that's not already in your library, but most code just isn't performance sensitive (in an algorithmic sense) or even algorithmically interesting.

      What matters is living with that code for many years after writing it, and not hating life. And that is still as much art as science. Sure, best practices continue to be formalized, but the field is still young in that respect, and I don't expect maintainability to settle down into "a set of rules to follow" before my career ends.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  3. This statistic is misleading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm an electrical engineer myself and the BLS statistics for this profession are misleading. The government categorizes electrical engineers into several sub-categories: electronic engineers, electrical engineers, fabrication engineers (silicon folks) and there is another for power engineers (the guys who work for the power company). I'd be hesitant to take this headline seriously without looking into it further.

    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.

  4. It doesn't say there are 10% less employees EE's by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  5. Offshoring created an apprenticeship gap by Moof123 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    15-20 years ago there were plenty of manufacturing jobs for EE's. It was a great way to learn how things were really put together, and in many cases it was the foundation of a good design engineering career. Places like HP/Agilent did a lot of their test an measurement RF/microwave career paths this way. A few years of keeping a production line that making RF/microwave widgets was a great way to learn the ropes and see how to (or not) make a good manufacturable design. Virtually all of that type of work is now offshored to Malaysia, China, and similar.

    Much of the design work has been eaten up by better ADC's and DAC with gobs of FPGA's doing what used to be an art form. So now the minimum level of skill needed to work as a decently paid EE doing actual EE work is very very high.

    Large numbers lost their jobs as the manufacturing went elsewhere and the engineers scurried to other jobs like programming, IT, etc to be able to feed themselves. There is a vacuum now between the EE graduates and the companies who need to hire more EE's. Companies want 5 years experience minimum to make sure you aren't a buffoon (and because they often simply have no entry level work to do), but there are very few entry level jobs to get that experience. So lots of fresh graduates find other work outside their EE degree. So lots of graduates, lots of job openings, and no good way to span the apprenticeship gap.

  6. Re:decline of uni into financial scam by tepples · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.