With severance spent and unemployment benefits expired, some engineers are hanging out their shingles as consultants to stay close to their chosen field and to avoid dipping into savings, filing for bankruptcy or worse. But others are moving into cyber security, health care or other areas where math and science skills are valued .

John Tang (a pseudonym), an aeronautical engineer who lost his job at The Boeing Co. in Seattle a few months ago, is now studying for a career in radiation therapy after failing to find an engineering job in Washington State.

"Radiation therapy isn't engineering, but it will do," he said. "I am looking for something that I can rely on to support myself and my family."

Tang possesses little savings, owes thousands of dollars in school loans (he graduated from RIT in 1997) and has spotty health care coverage. His wife is expecting their first child and her part-time nursing job will end in a few months when their child is born. Tang can't wait for the engineering market to rebound and said he may have to pay for medical bills out of pocket. He has started radiation therapy courses at a local community college.

Dream house for sale

Jon Turino is putting his dream house on the market. An EE and automatic test equipment expert who spent 25 years in high-tech product marketing, Turino has restarted the consulting practice he once operated but said he can no longer afford his home overlooking the Williamette River and Mount Hood in an upscale suburb of Portland, Ore. He has been unemployed for seven months.

"We're moving to my wife's condo on the other side of Portland that we've been renting to tenants for the last few years," said Turino, who last worked for Credence Corp.'s Integrated Measurement Systems in Beaverton, Ore. The couple's financial picture demands that they move to a more affordable home.

"It's been great but we can't keep it without a six-figure income or a high five-figure salary," Turino said.

The exact number of unemployed engineers is not known, but the U.S. Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that U.S. companies cut 437,000 high-tech jobs between January 2001 and June 2002. Over one million U.S. workers have lost their jobs since the beginning of 2002, according to Challenger Gray & Christmas, an outplacement consulting organization.

Short-term good?

Switching careers may be necessary for some, but career experts said that engineers who stay close to the field via consulting have a better chance of finding full-time engineering employment when the market turns up. They warn that engineers who leave the field for more than a year may find it difficult to return when hiring picks up.

Nick Corcodilos, president of North Bridge Group Inc and author of "Ask the Headhunter" at The Work Circuit, an EE Times Network community site, said his work as a recruiter of engineers after previous downturns showed that "it was very difficult if not impossible for engineers who left engineering for more than a year to find jobs. As long as there were engineers who had continuous employment available, those who left the profession didn't get hired."

A number of unemployed engineers in Washington are taking advantage of state-supported worker retraining programs available at Bellevue Community College and elsewhere. Bellevue is steering more of its students into health care positions to work as nurses, radiation therapists and ultrasound technicians rather than as computer scientists or computer networking experts due to the IT hiring slump, said Jean Floten, president of Bellevue Community College.

"IT is quite different from health care, where there is a current labor shortage and job placement rates are good," Floten explained. Though the switch to health care is a big change, "as a group engineers make a very successful switch into these careers," she said.

Engineers' knowledge base, prior education and good work skills are complemented by a determination to retool, and as a result they can often recover as much as 100 percent of their earlier wages, Floten said.

Needed services

Gary E. Johnson, an EE in Austin, Texas, was involved in IEEE employment activities for 10 years and served as chairman of its employment activities committee in 1998-'99, but he never thought he'd need help finding a job. That changed in September 2001 when he was laid off from his Internet audio program management and business development position at Cirrus Logic Inc. He is a representative for the IEEE-USA's employment and career services committee for a region that includes Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri, Kansas and Wyoming. Now he is running for election as IEEE USA member at large. He has been searching for a job while his fiancee supports him.

"Everyone I know in high tech has had to leave Austin and even the state of Texas to find work," Johnson said. He's had three interviews over the last year and recently received an offer.

IEEE-USA's employment activities slowed during the late-'90s upturn because members were busy and didn't focus on retraining or even networking. The organization is in the process of rebuilding its activities to helping the unemployed, he said.