Electrical Engineer Unemployement Soars

My stance on immigration has always been one of open arms and open mind. That's all been tempered in the last couple years, as it became clear to me that many companies in the tech industry are pushing for the expansion of the H1B visa program solely so they can bring in cheaper workers and undermine the wages of degreed engineers already in the USA. R&D labor is expensive.

So here's an interesting little article from Computerworld (back in April) talking about a recent surge in unemployment among electrical engineers. The article also mentions the very low unemployment among "software developers." And finally, it touches on the IEEE-USA's attempts to inhibit random expansion of the H1B visa program.

A few thoughts:

1) In this modern app/software era, it is very possible that many electrical engineers have simply migrated from hardware to software. Typically an electrical engineer can program too, so its not that uncomfortable of a switch. And apps is where the money is right now. I have a friend who worked for Honeywell as an electrical engineer but he's now doing Indie games for iOS and making a killing.

2) It's interesting the IEEE-USA refers to the cohort as "software developers" and not "computer scientists" or "computer engineers" or "software engineers." My guess is that this group includes all the above and more: people doing software development that don't have a 4 year ABET degree.

3) This H1B visa thing reminds me so much of the old days when bosses would try to break the union worker's strike by bringing in foreign labor. And yet the idea of bringing in more STEM is generally lauded. What a strange paradox where bringing in foreign tech labor boosts the American economy while simultaneously driving down wages in one of the last high-paying wage sectors.

You can read more I've written on the STEM controversy here, here, and here. And I already linked to it above, but this is the most important article I've written on this subject.

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