What STEM shortage? Electrical engineering lost 35,000 jobs last year

[FarCenter]

Computerworld - Despite an expanding use of electronics in products, the number of people working as electrical engineers in U.S. declined by 10.4% last year.

The decline amounted to a loss of 35,000 jobs and increased the unemployment rate for electrical engineers from 3.4% in 2012 to 4.8% last year, an unusually high rate of job losses for this occupation.

There are 300,000 people working as electrical engineers, according to U.S. Labor Department data analyzed by the IEEE-USA. In 2002, there were 385,000 electrical engineers in the U.S.

The trend in electrical engineering employment is occurring despite the emergence of the so-called Internet of Things, which promises to put networked electronics into every imaginable consumer and industrial product.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9245494/What_STEM_shortage_Electrical_engineering_lost_35_000_jobs_last_year

[TheKentuckian]

1. All that talk is bullshit to drive down wages, fuel education mills, and to set false hope

while misdirecting folks to believe they are the source of their misery.

[FBaggins]

2. Is EE the only STEM career?

[FarCenter]

7. No, and the Computerworld story addresses computer, mechanical and civil engineering

I think that petroleum engineering is in high demand.

Lots of STEM graduates leave their field after about 10 or 20 years, since it is difficult to keep up with new graduates.

[athena]

3. The STEM shortage is best seen by looking at anti-science attitudes in society.

With more STEM education, fewer people would dismiss evolution as just a "theory"; fewer people would ignore the scientific consensus on global warming; and fewer people would refuse to vaccinate their children.

The lack of jobs in electrical engineering is no reason to prevent or discourage young people from studying math, science, engineering, and technology. The most important benefit of a science education is that it teaches people to think critically and to be able to solve problems quantitatively.

[Fumesucker]

4. That's a great benefit if education is free or low cost

But that's nowhere near the case in the USA, if you sink tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars that you cannot discharge in bankruptcy into an education you have to consider the eventual financial return on that investment.

[postulater]

6. My daughter is doing data entry at an employment agency

while sitting on a Civil Engineering degree for the last year.

It's not just electrical.

We are wasting an entire generation of creativity by feeding the rich to take the jobs overseas.

[jsr]

5. It's an old lie from high-tech CEOs

[lutefisk]

8. Way too many people buy into this myth

People just accept it as fact that there is a STEM shortage and the US needs to go all out in throwing cash at anything remotely related to STEM (at the expense of pretty much everything else in education) in order to "be competitive in the world". That's just bullshit.

The Chronicle of Higher Education had a good piece on this issue on November 11, 2013, titled "The STEM Crisis: Reality or Myth?". It can be found by searching the title...

[tabbycat31]

9. the barista at the local coffee shop has a STEM degree