H-1B debate flares as EE jobless rate hits 7 percent

The Work Circuit ^ | April 15, 2003 | Margaret Quan

[mabelkitty]

MANHASSET, N.Y. — Unemployment among electronic engineers soared to 7 percent in the first quarter, the U.S. Department of Labor said last week, surpassing the national jobless rate of 5.8 percent recorded in March.

At the same time, some industry groups are considering lobbying for legislation to raise the annual quota for H-1B visas and allow more foreign technical workers into the United States.

[Billy_bob_bob]

It depends. Is your son of Chinese or Indian heritage? Then he can find work as an engineer. If he is of European heritage then he needs to go for marketing. If he is Hispanic then he can go for landscaping or food service, and if he is African-American then he should study for a job in Human Resources.

Silicon Valley has a very real caste system.

[Mihalis]

...What careers in engineering do have good job potential? (obviously computer programming and electronic engineering aren't in high demand)...

Transmission Planning engineers are in very high demand. Those are the people who do studies for the expansion of the high voltage power grid. Investment on the grid has virtually stopped in the last ten years and thousands of miles of transmission lines will have to be built. Transmission planners will be in high demand for at least 10-15 years. The following sites are a good indication of current demand in the electric power fields:

http://www.energyjobsearch.com/custom/x2list.asp?keywords=electrical%20engineer

http://www.merchantpowerplant.com/custom/x2list.asp?keywords=power%20transmission

[dljordan]

Beautiful sentiment. I'm one of those lazy, ungrateful computer nerds myself. I was proud of my CEO when after laying off 15,000 workers, robbing the pension fund and lecturing us on how we were going to have to work harder, he gave himself a $10,000,000 bonus. Great guy and a real hard worker.

[Billy_bob_bob]

Do you know what single word you could say to that CEO to make him turn pale? UNION!

I've never liked unions, but I'm starting to understand why they came about in the first place. If EE's want a future in this country, then they are going to have to unionize. Nothing else will work.

[dfwgator]

If engineers unionized, then all engineering jobs will go overseas.

[toast]

obviously computer programming and electronic engineering aren't in high demand

The demand is highly cyclical.

I came out of school in '91 with layoffs rampant at the local companies (Honeywell, Unisys, Control Data). The market was flooded with experienced engineers. Who wanted to hire the entry level guy fresh out of school? Worked as a tech for a year before landing a job at a small company as a manufacturing engineer.

As with anything else, a career as an EE can take unsuspected turns. I ended up in a good niche as it turns out. A Manufacturing Engineer for a medical device company. Pretty much immune to recession. (people get sick in good times and bad)

[mabelkitty]

Not that I know of.

So far the only ones who are demanding this remain in effect are industry types.

If we continue the practice, unemployment goes up and there will be another round of extensions and lowered cash to the Treasury.

If they eliminate it, unemployment goes down, Treasury gets a boost, but companies have to pay higher wages which could put some in a box with Wall Street.

[Billy_bob_bob]

So what are we supposed to do? Just take it?

Besides, they are already shipping all of the engineering jobs overseas. It's like, "Don't do that or I'll hit you", "But you're already hitting me", "Well, I'll hit you worse!"

I still think unions are the only solution at this point. I am quite open to suggestions.

[mabelkitty]

The EE's need to run for Congress.

[Billy_bob_bob]

Good idea. One problem. Engineers are logical, and they work to solve problems. Congress is run by lawyers, who are illlogical and who work to create problems. It's an "oil and water" kind of deal, and the lawyers are solidly in the majority in Congress.

Put the average engineer in Congress, and they would have a nervous breakdown after the first month. It is not possible for a logical problem-solver to survive the halls of Congress, IMHO.

[discostu]

Take a look at what unionized labor has wrought in the airline industry (or the mining industry, or the automobile industry, shipping, teaching, textiles...). Unionizing isn't a solution, if that is the "only" solution then there is no solution.

[ex-snook]

Now just think of the future in law enforcement. Jobs are opening up in Iraq and then other lands as mission creep sets in. There is also rebuilding all the war results as we get into nation building and rebuilding.

Don't expect the government to protect citizen's jobs in the border-less one world economy. "When they came to take the factory jobs no one complained, etc. etc. etc. you know how it goes." Good Luck.

[mabelkitty]

Don't forget the steel industry.

[Billy_bob_bob]

It does seem like there is a natural progression. First a new industry is born, then it matures, then it ends up being run by total maniac greedheads, then unions end up being established (as a response to the actions of the total maniac greedheads), and then the industry dies the death of a thousand cuts, thanks to the greed of the unions.

Greedy CEO's vs. greedy unions. What a great choice, huh?

Perhaps if we had a functioning legal system that actually punished corporate corruption and fraud we wouldn't need to go through this cycle. Perhaps if our political system actually listened to the concerns of citizens instead of campaign contributers then we could avoid this nonsense. However, since our legal and political systems are for sale to the highest bidder I don't see an alternative.

The anger needed to fuel a union movement has been kindled by the actions of the CEO's of the tech industry, and I predict they will soon have to pay the piper. The name of the piper will be Union.

[grania]

So us citizens are supposed to stand for hundreds of thousands of H1 and L1 workers being brought in to drive down our wages?

It's not just Electrical Engineers; it's just about any job category you can imagine being impacted. Consider also the secondary impact of people who can't find jobs in their own area of expertise driving down wages in other areas, when they take a desparation job.

What I wonder is, what's going to happen when the soldiers come home? A lot of these workers come from countries that didn't support the US coalition. The patriotic thing to do would be to send them home, and give US citizens the jobs.

I'd like to see a law that any qualified citizen could claim the job of a non-citizen (even those here legally!), and the non-citizens and their families could be sent packing!

[Myrddin]

Not bloody likely. I'm really starting to think that EE's need to unionize.

That's not a solution. Unemployed people joining unions have a problem paying the dues. Unions also tend to inflate compensation and that makes outsourcing to India even more attractive. Outsourcing and H1B/L1 visas are driving compensation rates down for jobs in the U.S. and also reducing the number of positions available.

The high cost of living in the U.S. is largely a product of the social welfare state. The politicians have an insatiable appetite for tax revenues and an uncontrollable urge to buy votes using social welfare programs. The tax burden puts U.S. based employees at a major disadvantage compared to individuals with similar skills in India. Unions and minimum wage laws have also put us at a competitive disadvantage with labor priced well over market rates and the real value of the labor. Why does an employee wiping tables and emptying trash cans at McDonald's merit $6.75 per hour for unskilled labor? Conversely, why should anyone spend $20,000 to $30,000 to pursue a EE when the return on the investment is headed in the direction of $18,000 gross income per year? There is a serious disconnect between skills and compensation.

[discostu]

Industries are run from the beginning by "total maniac greedheads". You don't start a company for fun, you start it for profit. That's the goal and once you take investor capital (or sell shares publicly) that's the duty. If companies can't be profitable with American workers that's not the companies' fault. The solution, of course, is the same solution to all bad economic situations: stop the obscene taxation which drives up the cost of labor and materials, end needless regulation that increases the cost of doing business, and stop punishing success.

It's not about greed in the unions, it's about raw stupidity and a lust for power. Unions like to demonstrate their might and often do so at the cost of the company. As for greedy CEOs, thank God for them, without them there would be no jobs.

The tech industry is already paying the piper, is was the tech bubble burst (because the "new economy" was a bloody lie) that started the problems in our economy in the first place. All of a sudden vast quantities of investment capital evaporated and a whole lot of very expensive people (remember how trickle down works) stopped earning and then stopped spending. The name of the piper is "recurring revenue stream", any business plan that doesn't have one is doomed to failure. The H1B stuff is a sideline people are using to divert attention away from the root issue: businesses that never should have been started and were obviously doomed from the start got millions in funding then spent it all on cool chairs and lattes. The fact that along the way they imported a sh!tpot full of foreign workers (and started playing with exporting work, which is failing miserably in almost every business that's doing it, this trend won't last that long) is just a sideline. As is always the case the place where the bad economy started will be the last place it's fixed (look at the automotive industry in the late 70s and early 80s). Dumping H1Bs probably won't help much, yes Americans will get those jobs but the heightened salary will hurt the businesses and probably cause them to not do a 1 for 1 trade. Just gotta ride things out it's getting better but there is no magic wand to make things perfect.