Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.

2 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.

  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.