IBM Corp., communication-equipment maker Agere Systems Inc. and contract manufacturer Flextronics International Ltd. each reported cost-cutting measures that, taken together, will eliminate more than 24,000 electronics-industry jobs worldwide during the coming months.

Prior to the layoff announcements, out-of-work EEs totaled 34,000 in the second quarter, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Sources at IEEE-USA, the organization that represents the interests of U.S. engineers, bristled over the seriousness of the unemployment situation.

"There is lots of supply and little demand for engineers," said George McClure, retired aerospace engineer and chair of IEEE-USA's Career Policy Committee. "I don't think we'll have a shortfall for the next 18 months to two years," he predicted.

Even before the most recent layoffs, the IEEE-USA had been trying to gauge the extent of the unemployment crisis and draw government attention to it. Last month the organization blanketed Congress with a letter from IEEE president LeEarl Bryant, expressing alarm over rising unemployment among engineers and asking members of Congress to rethink the H-1B visa program, as well as other issues contributing to joblessness among U.S. engineers.

Members of Congress, on recess until September, have not responded to the IEEE-USA's letter. But the IEEE-USA's concerns took on a new urgency with the layoff news.

IBM Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.) will cut 15,600 jobs, or 5 percent of its work force, by Sept. 30, the company reported in a 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday (Aug. 13). Most of the job cuts involved the microelectronics, global services, servers and software divisions.

No more optoelectronics

On Wednesday (Aug. 14) A HREF="http://www.agere.com">Agere Systems Inc. announced it would sell its optoelectronics operations or stop producing optoelectronic components by no later than June 2003 and cut 4,000 jobs, or more than a third of its work force, to bring its total head count to 7,200 by the end of 2003. The company said it will sell or close manufacturing facilities in Breiningsville and Redding, Pa.; as well as plants in Dallas, Alhambra and Irwin, Calif.; and Matamoros, Mexico. Agere also said it will transfer IC manufacturing operations from Allentown, Pa ., to an 8-inch wafer fab in Orlando, Fla.

A spokesman said half of the Agere job losses would be managers, most of them from technical positions.

Meanwhile, companies overseas are feeling the pinch of a constrained economy, too: Singapore-based A HREF="http://www.flextronics.com">Flextronics International Ltd. submitted documents to U.S. regulators Wednesday (Aug. 14) stating that it planned to shed 5,261 jobs as part of a long-term restructuring plan. The company trimmed 856 jobs as of June 30, and gave notice to another 4,405 employees that they would lose their jobs after plants had either been closed or consolidated. Flextronics said it is reducing manufacturing capacity in high-cost regions of the world.

Flextronics operates in 28 countries including the United States, where it has locations in 14 states.

Industry analysts were not particularly surprised by the layoffs. Nor did they feel the worst is over. Will Zachmann, president of Canopus Research, an information technology research firm (Duxbury, Mass.), predicted that IBM will continue to slash jobs. Despite some efforts to shift to services, Zachmann said, Big Blue remains "tied to IT dinosaur products" such as the Z-series, which is based on the 360 and 390 mainframes, and the I series, the AS/400 minicomputer.

"Unless the economy gets a lot better very soon, the company could be in serious trouble," Zachmann said.

Another analyst, Robert Rivers, works with the American Engineering Association (Fort Worth, Texas) and has studied engineering manpower issues for more than a decade. He said that corporations, under the gun to produce cleaner earnings statements, "will increase pressure to reduce costs and make real profits, and the quickest way to do that is to reduce labor costs."

Rivers has no numbers on the engineering mix of the recent layoffs, but he noted that "this does not help the [already bad] situation. And a significant downward adjustment of unemployment is not in the cards for at least the next few quarters."

To obtain a more accurate picture of the numbers of unemployed EEs, the IEEE-USA is analyzing an unemployment survey of its members. Results are expected by early fall. IEEE-USA is also thinking about hosting an unemployment workshop to illustrate the extent of the problem, McClure said.

He said highlighting the hows and whys of EE unemployment is an important counterpoint to recent reports of engineering shortages.

"Current experience is showing that there certainly is no shortage," McClure said.

McClure said he has received many e-mails from IEEE members in cities like Dallas, where struggling telecom companies have booted engineers from payrolls. Many of those folks have been jobless for more than six months, McClure said.