<<here is one from the globe. Technical labor markets are super tight! >>
"America just isn't creating sufficient numbers of engineers," said Robert Shillman, chief executive of Cognex, where already 60 percent of new hires hold foreign passports. "This is like a natural resource. We should be as worried about the supply of engineers as we are about oil."
This is a bunch of nonsense. I've heard this garbage since the 1970s, and it has spawned a tremendous explosion in the number of engineering students. Other than electronics and computer software, the engineering job market has been tight since 1981, which was just before I graduated. For many years I sent dozens of resumes directly to companies, and also to job-shops, with a very, very weak response rate.
I've been out of work for a year, and I don't have anyone knocking down my door to hire me. If I were willing to go work in some rural area, like western Kentucky or northern Mississippi, maybe things would be different. If I were willing to let a job-shop (they place people on short-term contracts without benefits) pay me $25/hour (and bill out $37.50), which is the same rate they set for "designers" (who often turn out to be drafters without any design experience), maybe things would be different. But I can't find a good-paying job in a big city.
The companies themselves prefer to have recent college grads, or people with two years experience, that they can pay $30,000 a year, instead of someone with much more experience and ability, who wants twice that salary. |
