Sunday, September 1, 2024

Restoring Engineering Jobs 9-1-24

Engineering work is done in Design Cycles that can last from a few months to a few years depending on the problems that need to be overcome. There should be Engineering Jobs in all manufacturing companies. 

When US manufacturing was off-shored, the Engineering jobs were also off-shored. Maintaining the design to accommodate the component supply required on-site engineers. Most of this engineering work was done in China and other foreign countries.

I warned my Electronics Company customers that the 50% discounts for circuit boards offered by China in the 2000s would be eaten up by a 12-month learning curve’s impact on failures to pass incoming inspection, returning parts that failed inspection, trips overseas and the loss of intellectual property as Chinese Engineers modified designs. The electronics revolution that began in the 1970s ended with the completion of the PC and Telephony design cycles in the 2000s.

Unfortunately, the CEOs who were running these companies were driving the stock prices up by delivering on record profit margins. This was short-sighted and actually undermined their company’s futures.  Boeing is the latest poster-child for losing control of their engineering and manufacturing processes.

Asia picked up the slack and developed the flat-screen TVs and other innovations. We watched Toyota and Honda take US market share beginning in the 1980s. GM and Ford failed to deliver the quality and fuel efficiency we required as gas prices were rising. Chrysler was bought by Fiat in 2014.

All the engineers who were active in the 1970s have retired by 2020. New Math and Common Core ruined all interest in Math Classes and the number of college students who were proficient at math collapsed.

In 2024 the US had 28,7 million engineers. At the same time, the 20th edition of the State Of the Developer Nation Report suggests that the number of these experts will increase from 24,3 million in 2024 to 45 million employed engineers in 2030. -Jul 22, 2024

6% of US college students are engineering majors. The number of Engineering graduates in the workforce has been growing at a rate of 3.48%, from 4.67M in 2021 to 4.83M in 2022. The largest single share of Engineering graduates go on to work as Software developers (8.83%).

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

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