What's needed even more are the skilled technicians and high-tech workers who can operate and maintain that technology that we already have and which is being developed by the 'engineers' and scientists of the world.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
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To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
I think that the engineers they are talking about are the "skilled technicians and high-tech workers" that JohnRBaker mentions. The universities, as GregLocock states, are going to try and get students into any major they can say is an engineering major. Not a major that will lead to a job that is in demand.
Garth Dreger PE - AZ Phoenix area
As EOR's we should take the responsibility to design our structures to support the components we allow in our design per that industry standards.
You can expect to see one of these "shortage" scares every year, and often more than one a year. It's been happening consistently since the 1930s- it's a very popular myth.
If there were a real shortage, you would see engineering salaries on average rising by 2-3x the cost of living. You would also see the overwhelming majority of engineering grads working as engineers, instead of what we see here in Canada: 30% of engineering grads work as engineers, and the rest aren't all CEOs either. I sincerely hope I live long enough to EVER see such a shortage! In my almost 25 years working as an engineer, I've never seen one. Brief blips in individual industries in specific locations, typically cyclic industries like oil and gas? Sure- certainly seen a few of those. And those who have never seen a down-cycle will think it can go on forever too. Every minor blip of a shortage like that is used as an excuse to flood the market in general terms, and when the shortage collapses, nobody is there to turn the supply taps back off again. Thus has it always been...
The "shortage," as suggested above, is due to companies unwilling to pay the market rate; so, there's a shortage of engineers willing to work at a slave's wage.
Additionally, while there may be an abundance of engineers, in general, there's always a lack of GOOD engineers. Our company has a tendency to scarf up engineers wit a modicum of engineering talent and make them project engineers, who are then no longer able to spend time doing real engineering.
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faq731-376
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Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
As most others say I'd be skeptical of any fundamental general shortage of engineers.
There are shortages of engineers with certain required experience in certain field/specialty's willing to work for a certain wage...
Increasing overall supply of new graduates will likely not directly affect most of the above mentioned real shortages, except perhaps by depressing market value of engineers so addressing the wage issue somewhat.
I saw just yesterday that congress in the US is again trying to expand H1B visa program for immigrant engineers etc. due to the claimed shortage by industry.
The market for engineers is just like the market for any other professional skill. The salary offered is usually proportional to the value of your skills perceived by the employer. If he is paying you $100/hr, and you are earning him $200 for that same hour of labor, you are giving him excellent value for your cost.
It all depends on what you mean by an Engineer. In the UK it covers every thing from a semi-skilled assembly worker to a fully qualified, top line member of the Institute. I suspect the article concerns car mechanics, electricians, welders, plumbers ect as the numbers involved seem huge for a population of 6 million or so.
There is definitely a shortage of people who know what they are doing as we stopped training anyone properly years ago
Hence my comment about "skilled technicians and high-tech workers" which can often be the products of a two year community college program or vocational school.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA Siemens PLM: UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
Maybe in some communities there is a shortage. After all I would not want to work in those communities, unless I was paid much more than what they are offering.
The UK's IMechE rag last month (Professional Engineering) ran an editorial containing this text on the subject of skills shortages:
"The industry was guilty of taking its eye off the ball for a long period when it comes to training. Just look at all the apprenticeship and graduate recruitment schemes that were deemed too expensive in the 1980s and 1990s, and quietly shelved. Firms began to rely on poaching suitable candidates that had been trained elsewhere. It was easier to moan about skills shortages, rather than contribute to a solution themselves."
I was one of those people who benefitted from one of these expensive 1980's schemes. I recall asking my first HR manager what the company got out of spending all this money on us, with no promise of anything coming out of it. He replied that it was the cheapest way to get good engineers.
The UK's engineering preparatory system was astoundingly good- sad to hear it fell by the wayside. Same is true of my uni, which has a mandatory co-op program (very good, essential in my view to the education of a decent engineer), but also once had a lot of faculty with significant industrial experience. No more- they're all academic pinheads now, which is the only way they can be qualified under the publish or perish research funding regime that determines whether or not they're good candidates for faculty positions. Some are very earnest and try very hard, but most are teaching engineering training stuff like sizing and selection etc. from a textbook or someone else's notes.
But you've hit the nail on the head- the b*tching about shortages and "lack of skills" is as a result of the firms' finding themselves short of people with 10 years of applicable relevant experience that those same firms didn't hire ten years ago as fresh grads. Someone with ten years of related experience isn't considered qualified, nor is somebody with 30 years of experience, much less a fresh grad...No way to fix that, folks, aside from hiring young people as interns/co-ops, training them, picking the best ones and hiring them, and then training them on the job. But that's not desirable for some firms because a) it takes effort, b) you need to pay them well so they stick around for long enough to give you a return on your training investment, and c) you need to find people in your senior staff who are both willing and able to train them. We figured it out, and I sincerely hope that some of our competitors don't so we can blow them out of the market.
The basic engineering shortage problem comes back to the purple squirrel issue. There are enough candidates out there that a company can post a long list of obtuse requirements and eventually find the perfect-fit candidate. The industry then complains about how long it took to find the perfect-fit candidate, and the basic assumption is that there is an engineering shortage.
I just wish that companies were as diligent in the skill-set of people in the hiring process for managers.
What's more interesting is the original question which is where is future demand going to come from. Engineering is kind of this fundamental force in our civilization. Pretty much everything that matters in the last 2000 years has been a function of the creation of some technology or the other. The question is what's next? The internet has been huge, as has oil and gas. Both of those things will probably continue for some time at least, but there are my less obvious predictions for the next 10 years:
1. Medical devices focused on low cost care rather than treatment of exotic ailments. Think compact MRI machines that plug into an iPhone.
2. Construction in cities - people are moving out of the suburbs into urban condo highrises
3. Adaptation to global warming - building bridges for bike paths, electric cars, energy efficient buildings, solar plants, solar energy storage.
4. Adaptation to an aging population - building hospitals and nursing homes. Building robots to take care of old folk.
5. Creation of artificial meat - people are increasingly squeemish about intensive farming. Engineers will grow meat in a lab, bypassing the animal.
6. Building toys for the global rich - when the 0.01% have 10% of global wealth, they can afford some nice cars/helicopters/glass stair cases
In the UK the utilities, the power generators, rail, steel, mining (we don't do that any more), shipbuilding (nor this), oil & gas, and petrochemicals to name a few have survived for years on the glut of well-trained engineers who were downsized into the private sector when the nationalised industries were privatised in the 1980's. Many of those working in today's HR are too young to realise that the pool of talent they relied upon wasn't being replenished and that within a single generation that pool would pretty much cease to exist. There's a generation virtually missing from the old industries where there should be guys of around my age, but when we were fresh graduates the market was flooded with experienced guys and training us young 'uns would have cut in to profits too much. Now Old Father Time has caught up with the experienced guys of yesteryear, and us young 'uns are going grey.
It is going to get much worse for employers before it gets better, but it is hard to feel much sympathy.
Scotty -if that were the case I'd expect to see pay in the UK for experienced engineers rapidly increasing, as employers bid for the decreasing pool of available experienced talent. I must admit i don't keep a close eye on it, but I see very few engineering jobs at 80k pounds, which is roughly parity for me, although house prices would be an issue even then.
Cheers
Greg Locock
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