Nearly one-third of the respondents have received a cut in salary. Most respondents personally know someone who has been laid off because of offshoring, al-though most have been able to avoid it themselves. And layoffs are more prevalent in manufacturing and engineering than in R&D and chip design.

While engineers intellectually understand the economics behind offshoring (57 percent favor offshoring manufacturing), emotionally it's different when the job is design. Nearly 80 percent are not in favor of moving design engineering offshore.

Nearly two-thirds of the professionals surveyed have worked with an offshore team, but only half rated the quality and timeliness of the offshore team as excellent or good.

Half of the respondents expect the topic to play a major role in their decisions when they enter the voting booth in November.

The survey was conducted on March 9 to 11. E-mail invitations were sent to EE Times readers on March 9, and a similar invitation was posted on eet.com. The surveys totaled 726, representing a plus/minus 3.6 percent confidence interval.

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