lay off many experienced electrical engineers.

You're living in a bubble if you don't believe that there are unemployed STEM PhD's right now.

I personally know of a newly minted PHD chemist from a top school who's still looking for a job one year later, and another guy with a bachelor's degree in ME who needed more than a year.

I don't know how your husband is advertising those positions, but he needs to change his tactics. There are plenty of job-seekers out there for jobs whose pay/benefits meet industry standards. One problem is that the computer screening so many employers use these days screens out many people would be perfectly capable of doing the advertised jobs. (For example, someone who has worked in the food processing industry producing vegetable products is perfectly capable of transferring those skills to fruit or other food products.) Or maybe your husband has written such a restricted job description that, on the surface, no one would seem to be qualified. This is what employers sometimes do when their real aim is to hire cheaper foreign engineers.