If you are an older engineer, the news is less good. Companies like young talent; someone fresh out of university with a double-E degree, or perhaps a master's, who they can mold into their type of engineer is fine. Even better is the second- or third-jobber with experience in C++, Java, VHDL, mixed-signal ASIC design or radio-frequency design. But the 50-year-old who knows electronics from the transistor level up, it seems, is less valuable to the industry.

Of course, any individual engineer's pay will depend on many things apart from age and talent. More important are an engineer's company, the markets pursued and where in the world the engineer is working. For it is the global nature of the so-called skills shortage that is producing the tidal forces that are creating jobs in Eastern Europe and India, for example, and moving engineers to the United States.

So the debate in the United States on whether to raise the limits on the number of H-1B visas issued each year to allow more engineers to immigrate must be seen as part of a global phenomenon.

A European angle to the phenomenon surfaced late last month. The Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International trade body announced the formation of a broad coalition of European trade organizations to examine the skills shortage here and make representations to the European Commission and national governments.

In Europe, as in the United States, the debate is not new, but here the emphasis is different. There is no great concern expressed about immigration of high-tech workers from developing countries -- in most cases engineers don't want to come to Europe. They would rather head for the higher living standards of the United States or Canada and, from a professional standpoint, move closer to the heart of the electronics industry.

Instead, the European debate focuses on the lack of students of science and engineering at university. Europe's young people are turning their backs on science and engineering degrees at an alarming rate. The exact extent of the problem is not known, but the anecdotal evidence shows numbers more than halving in some courses over the past six or seven years. And this is coming at a time when demand for science and engineering g raduates is expected to boom.

The youngsters that do go through university want to become lawyers, doctors, accountants, film makers, sports and entertainment stars and even journalists -- but preferably TV journalists. These youngsters are not fools. They know math and physics are hard and they don't think the pay and prospects at the end of the studies are worth the effort.

So my prediction is that SEMI's Skilled Technology Workforce initiative has about as much chance of success as England's King Canute had when he tried to command a different global and tidal force -- the ocean tide itself.

The situation is made worse in Europe because the United States poaches our best engineers. Companies are running advertisements for U.S. positions over here, and you can bet engineers in Russia, India and elsewhere are being cajoled to work hard in the hope of a transfer to Silicon Valley.

At the same time, employers will have to face up to two basic but unpalatable truths. They will have to pay higher salaries to engineers and spend money on training and retraining them, even at the risk that it will benefit that engineer's next employer rather than themselves.

When engineering pay is higher, the profile of the job in society will rise. You might even get a TV series to compete with those about cops, lawyers and doctors. With good money and society's recognition, kids will start wanting to be engineers again.

As I said, if you are an older engineer the news isn't as good. If you are engineering solutions for strong end markets, I predict your salary also will rise. But if your company or your sector of the industry hits hard times and you get laid off, it won't necessarily be easy to get another engineering job.

The only solace is that as long as demand for engineering skills remains strong, things should improve. And it should make those companies that let engineers go rather than retraining them, and those that stick to the cult of youth, losers in the end.

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