Is President Obama Right About Engineers?, asks CIS. President Obama seems to be clueless as to the real plight of the unemployed and underemployed highly skilled, as his answer to a woman talking about her unemployed husband shows. He seems unaware of the rising trends of outsourcing and the fact that older experienced engineers end up pricing themselves out of the market against newer job entrants who cost less.
Industry is always complaining about a ‘skills shortage’ because they want (a) instantly productive people who are (b) specifically skilled in whatever arcane area they need filled and (c) do not want to bother with training the people involved. Oh, and (d) they don’t want to pay up for excellence. Fast, good and cheap – you can’t get all three.
The CIS article has a chart that shows the real story: The ‘unemployed’ engineer is a small category fo 100,000, but more than twice as many have left the labor force and 1.4 million are working, but not as an engineer.
Obama had no good answer and really doesn’t understand this issue. The solution if there is one has to come from private sector, so perhaps it’s a relief that Obama didn’t attempt his typical govt-fits-all answer. Companies need to start thinking about training as part of how they keep their employees productive, and stop trying to bean-count away experience and excellence in their workforce. Or, figure out how much value each engineer provides and go full-bore free market on it.
And those of us who are engineers have to take charge of our own careers, as nobody else is doing it for us.