ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Facing a losing battle against the widespread predictions of a 190,000-person shortfall in information technology personnel, IEEE-USA is responding with its own forecast.

The American arm of IEEE has commissioned a $10,000 study from the economic-forecast analysis firm of DRI-McGraw Hill to "develop a 10-year forecast of employment in 17 scientific, engineering and technical occupations in 89 industrial sectors."

While IEEE-USA has some preliminary numbers in hand, it doesn't expect a full report until October.

The reason for commissioning the forecast report, said Career Policy Council chairman Paul Kostek, was "to be able to respond" to a projection by the Information Technology Association of America's much-quoted forecast of a shortage of 190,000 information-technology workers.

Kostek told 300 attendees at the IEEE-USA Professional Activities Committee for Engineers (PACE) conference that he and other IEEE officials met with ITAA president Harris Miller a few months ago to object to the shortage prediction.

IEEE-USA presidential candidate George McClure told PACE that IEEE-USA's analysis of the ITAA study shows that everyone from technicians to computer engineers were lumped into the 190,000 figure. Furthermore, the ITAA survey found that employers actually listed about 5,400 job openings. ITAA came up with the 190,000 estimate by including probable openings at companies that did not respond.

Show your figures
But when IEEE raised objections, ITAA's Miller responded with "Where are your numbers?"

That, said Kostek, motivated IEEE-USA to generate its own forecast.

There's little doubt, McClure and Kostek agree, that there is high demand for engineers today. But McClure told PACE that a couple of temporary factors were influencing the labor market. They are:

1. The Year 2000 problem. Employers have hired hundreds of programmers to figure out how to reprogram software that does not reflect the changeover to a new millennium. McClure called it the "last hurrah for Cobol programmers." Hopefully, he said, the problem will be licked soon, and that will decrease the demand for programmers.

2. The networking of industry. Companies are spending 43 percent of their capital budgets on networking hardware and software. "But soon the industry will be networked," he said. That will alleviate the shortfall industry is currently enduring, he said.

Problem shift
McClure worries that if too many high school students enter engineering in the next couple of years, "by the time they get out, the Year 2000 problem will be solved, industry will be networked, and they'll be asking 'Where are all the jobs?' "

IEEE-USA has long been suspicious of shortage forecasts. In the 1980s, the National Science Foundation projected a shortfall of some 200,000 engineers and scientists, but the methodology of that forecast was roundly criticized and later dismissed. Less than five years later, engineering endured its largest wave of layoffs in years as the defense industry and the commercial world downsized.

EEs attending PACE generally supported IEEE-USA's skepticism about shortages. They passed a recommendation that IEEE monitor and respond, in a timely fashion, to any forecasts involving supply and demand of technical manpower.

One engineer organized a job fair in Chicago and invited some 30 companies, but only a few showed up. If they wanted graduates so badly, where were they? he asked, describing human-resource people as "lazy" and adding that many company representatives at job fairs are independent contractors, not corporate HR people.

Robert Rivers, a known critic of shortage predictions, asked why salaries haven't soared in response to a so-called shortage. He added that the labor market has been able to fill tens of thousands of computer-analyst jobs recently, despite a shortage, by drawing people from other disciplines.

However, IEEE executive director Dan Senese spoke from the viewpoint of an employer in noting that he can't hire enough information-technology people.

In addition, it's become extremely difficult to retain IT people at reasonable salaries as other companies outbid IEEE for their services.

Six figures aren't enough
Mike Andrews, a consultant who has hired engineers at the $60,000 to $120,000 range in Phoenix, can't locate enough top engineers despite those high-end wages.

IEEE-USA's attempt to counter ITAA's projections of huge shortages comes at a time when even EE Times readers are conceding staffing problems. After more than 20 years of categorically rejecting shortage forecasts, more than 600 respondents to the 1997 EE Times Worldwide Salary & Opinion Survey agreed, by a very narrow 50.5 percent to 49.5 percent margin, that there aren't enough engineers--especially in software--to go around.

The IEEE-USA forecast is not a survey. DRI uses an input-output methodology to analyze economic activity. From that analysis, DRI forecasts the demand for scientists and engineers based on an optimistic, pessimistic or baseline economic scenario. This, according to the IEEE, will eliminate the anecdotal-type of information currently being spread about employers' failure to find people.

IEEE-USA has long maintained that employers aren't plumbing the entire pool of potential engineers. Retirees, older engineers and laid-off EEs with outdated skills could be retrained for new jobs, according to McClure and Kostek.

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