Featured Sandy Munro and China proof

Getting an MBA degree sadly does more to encourage white collar criminals than it does to actually benefit society in the way people with an engineering degree can do... And the US has been declining a long time in that regard:

A 2005 New York Times story reported that more than 600,000 engineers graduated from Chinese institutions compared to 70,000 in the United States — that's the number that got widely circulated a decade-plus ago. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5478159

China now graduates roughly 1.3 million engineers per year versus about 130,000 in the United States — a roughly 10-to-1 gap. Some analysts put it even higher, at 1.38 million Chinese engineering graduates annually, about seven times the U.S. figure. China graduates 1.3 million engineers per year, versus just 130,000 in the U.S. We need AI to bridge the gap | Fortune

 

I hope they can all find jobs

 

How often has an engineer told you that they can't find work?

 

At the rate I'm going, I certainly hope I'm still employable at 76 because I'm going to have to still be working by then.

One thing that affects the job market is the same principal of supply and demand that affects everything else. If the number of engineers suddenly doubled then the average salary of an engineer would go down. And keep in mind that this is a global market, so while governments can try to implement protectionism to keep their workers with the same salaries, in the end the cost-effectiveness of having a glut of skilled workers elsewhere eventually filters in and makes such skills less lucrative in all countries.

The exception is unless it's the type of skilled job that has to be done locally, then it's dependent only on the local job market. Basically, if you want a lucrative career, you need to find something that is desperately needed that no one else can do or wants to do.

 

^ Yep; talked my nieces and nephews into healthcare careers. They're all doing great and have a job waiting for them. Great portability too and chances of getting outsourced is slim to null. There are many facids to a healthcare vocation - NOT just nurses and doctors; also support staff, PT, facilities to support the infrastructure.

I've seen the outsourcing thing; up close and personnel - but most staff are too stupid to realize that they're basically giving away their own jobs. I've had department managers and facility directors invite me to lunch at very fancy restaurants; after I've retired. They would ask me how to resolve issues of inflated cost and lower equipment up-time trends in their spreadsheets that didn't exists, before I retired. Told them to sign maintenance contracts with minimum up-time guarantees and penalties for the critical equipment - That's what I would do to ensure operational readiness. Tell that department(s) that they have 3 years to clean house or effectively be replaced with contractors that can actually do the job on-budget and on-time. The cost of those maintenance contracts would be the yard-stick that they should easily beat - otherwise, they're just a parasite on the facilities operating budget. The spreadsheet already shows the pattern of mismanagement.

YMMV

 

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