Posted on 09/15/2014 3:26:55 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
[SNIP]
All of which brings us to the latest popular lament among pundits, politicians, and even some in the business world: the perceived lack of engineers and/or ‘STEM’ (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) graduates. President Obama has said “We need more engineers,” so has Hillary Clinton, and then Lockheed Martin executive Stephanie Hill recently stated that “we’ll lose” if we don’t produce at least 1 million more ‘STEM’ grads.
About all the handwringing, readers can relax. Indeed, there’s nothing to this story or alleged shortage. Price signals work. They always do, and they do because one of the underlying purposes of markets is to fulfill unmet needs. We don’t need government or deep-thinking policy types to fix what is not a problem. The free markets already are as evidenced by the higher pay that engineers and other technical types can command in the marketplace.
Assuming the higher pay doesn’t cause more individuals to migrate toward STEM disciplines, that will merely serve as a signal for companies to apportion even more in the way of funds to the hiring of those who do. If market forces can turn million dollar computers into commodities that can be had for a few hundred, it’s very apparent that they can solve any presumed dearth of technical laborers. Important here is that innovations divined by the very engineers seen as too short in supply are rapidly negating the need for local talent as is.
Indeed, while Lockheed Martin’s Hill says “we’ll lose” if we don’t produce more STEM grads, companies like oDesk are rendering this imagined shortfall irrelevant. That’s the case because oDesk matches businesses around the world with engineers and computer programmers from around the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
So libs, how many of those Central American illegal border crossers are engineers?
I find a shortage of engineering jobs.
STEM workers are generally treated like dirt and put into cookbook production types of environments. The Engineering Factory. Crank out the widgets.
I saw an east technicians job the other week.
It was $15 hour and they wanted a BEE.
I am glad I got my BSEE.
There is going to be a shortage of power engineers soon since a lot of them are dying out and the schools are not producing that many.
I am middle aged and it is all Navy School and experience.
Little late to getting the degree.
I started later. But I will still be working until I die.
RF engineers are a dying breed as well.
Odd in this wireless society.
Seriously, I can not believe some of the poor wages they want to pay some of these guys.
Well, they do, unless you make it a point to bring in H1Bs by the thousands.
If you want to be poor, become an engineer. If you want to have a decent life, get an engineering degree and go into finance.
What we really need is fewer lawyers, and fewer politicians.
There’s a great shortage of STEM workers in this country—a shortage of those who will accept third-world wages. Supposedly we, as a country, pivoted away from factory work to focus on “higher paying” jobs like engineering, only to instead pay these engineers “factory worker” wages. It’s a scam.
Senator Jeff Sessions recently said : "The tech industry’s promotion of expanded temporary visas (such as the H-1B) and green cards is driven by a desire for cheap, young and immobile labor. It is well documented that loopholes enable firms to legally pay H-1Bs below their market value and to continue the widespread age discrimination acknowledged by many in the tech industry" ...
PAY them Less and REPLACE older citizen employees with these special visa workers ...
Meanwhile... Joe burger Flipper wants a raise.
I’m in the environmental engineering field at a very large firm, and find that the number of engineering positions is dropping faster than the number of people going into retirement. It may be that infrastructure (water treatment, wastewater treatment, pipelines, etc.) is being stretched as local and state funding is declining. And reduced economic activity has led to a dramatic drop in water demand in many cities. So municipalities are delaying or deferring projects.
Fewer civil/environmental engineers are needed in the US compared with 10 years ago.
FIXED!
Four engineers were sitting around one day trying to figure out what kind of Engineer God is.
The first engineer says “I think God is a Mechanical Engineer, because of joints and muscle and sense of balance.” The other three nod there heads and say “Yeah, could be.”
The second engineer says “I think God is an Electrical Engineer, because of the nervous system and neural network.” The other three nod there heads and say “Yeah, could be.”
The third engineer says “I think God is a Chemical Engineer, because of hormonal balances and metabolism.” The other three nod there heads and say “Yeah, could be.”
The fourth engineer snaps his fingers and shouts out “I know, God MUST be a Civil Engineer!”
The other three ask “Why?”
“Well” says the fourth engineer, “who else would put a waste water drainage right through a prime recreational area?”
Engineers are Cool
That’s because Joe is an under employed engineer. 0.5 lol.
I don’t know when burger-flipping became anything but a job for pimple-faced teens, its distressing to see 30-something men and women behind those counters, especially when these adults mess up your order with greater frequency than the kids.
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