Following them are, surprisingly, design engineers. But that category could include a host of people.

A California semiconductor manager complains of a shortage of "IC designers of all sorts (memory, analog, etc.)."

Another large group, cited by 7 percent, agreed with a California senior engineer who spoke of a lack of "experienced embedded systems designers and developers."

Some 19 percent complain of not being able to find, as one reader put it, "experienced, highly qualified, well-rounded design types who can take a project and run with it!"

Here's a national scan of spot shortages reported from the trenches:

"ASIC experience, especially top-down design." -Minnesota consultant

"Highly experienced Windows software designers." -New Hampshire owner/partner

"EEs-too many CS grads." -components industry chief engineer

"People who can integrate commercial off-the-shelf VME products. Also, real-time programmers." -military/aerospace group leader

"EDA professionals with strong software skills." -California software engineer

"RF and software-in the same engineer!" -California design engineer

"Generalists with multidisciplinary education or experience." -Florida principal engineer

"Chip-design verification engineers, chip designers, CAE team leader." -Massachusetts MTS .

So, does all this good news and chatter about "shortages" mean that every EE south of Saskatchewan is employed? No.

This is the job market of the 1990s. Witness this New York project engineers career in the last couple of years: "Hired by Company A in Division 1. Moved to Division 2. Accepted buyout plan. Went skiing. Got rehired by Company A, Division 1. Company A sells Division 1 to Company B. I now work for Company B." Got that?

That project engineer's career points up the dichotomy of an engineering career in the 1990s. Even in an admittedly robust economy, employers are keeping their overheads low. Hence, buyouts, layoffs and selloffs.

It's not so surprising that 4.6 percent of the 891 respondents said they were unemployed at some time in the past 12 months. That's an improvement from the 6.1 percent out of work last year, but it's much higher than the estimated 1 percent unemployment rate estimated for EEs by Robert Rivers, editor of Engineering Manpower . Nationwide, he estimates, only 6,000 EEs were unemployed last quarter.

The reason for the higher number in the EE Times survey may lie in the question itself: not all of those 4.6 percent are necessarily unemployed now. And some, as in past years, voluntarily sit on the sidelines or, as our New Yorker did, "went skiing."

One interesting fact: None of the 125 design and development managers in our survey reported being unemployed in the past year. Middle managers were primary targets of downsizing in the early 1990s. We suspect that technology companies are hanging onto their managers today, especially this group who presumably have strong technical skills to go along with their busin ess acumen.

If some of the 40 unemployed EEs are currently scanning the want ads for a job, they will find that it is an applicant's market, provided they have reasonably current skills, and have not been pigeonholed into a rubber-stamp middle-manager's job or become the sole NMOS expert east of the Mississippi.

"There has been no better time to lose a job," outplacement expert John Challenger noted this summer. "We expect 200,000 jobs to be added monthly to the national rolls for the balance of the year."

Indeed, the national unemployment rate has bottomed to 5.1 percent, the lowest since the late 1980s. That robust number distressed the bond market, in the typical "What's-good-for-Main Street-is-bad-for Wall Street" scenario. The bond ghouls, as Public Television's "Wall Street Week" host Louis Rukeyser calls them, are spooked by the suggestion that we are approaching a full-employment status, which will produce pressures to raise wages-and hence drive up interest rates.

But as th e salary numbers in our first chapter indicate, the engineering world has not seen severe overall price pressure-1996 respondents reporting getting an average $3,300 more in the past 12 months. We saw higher raises between 1994 and 1995, averaging $3,900. However, individual companies, especially on the West Coast, may have hiked salaries substantially for certain types of engineers. Five-digit increases were not unheard of this year for experts in wireless communications, software or chip development.

Back to EE Times Salary and Opinion Survey

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