<p>Well, great news for soon to be engineering graduates: There are plenty of jobs out there. </p>
<p>Tha bad news: They are not in the U.S. </p>
<p>Germany's Labor Market: A Bright Spot in Europe </p>
<p>NUREMBERG, GermanyGerman unemployment decreased sharply in September, and total jobless is expected to fall below the politically sensitive 3 million in October, underscoring the country's strong economic recovery over the summer months.</p>
<p>German car maker Daimler AG has hired new workers, also by converting temporary hires into permanent jobs, citing strong demand for its A-Class and B-Class models. It also plans to take on more than 500 entry-level employees this year, mostly engineers and computer specialists.</p>
<p>Germans seem to be more practical than Americans and Germans definitely abhor debt. In Germany, professions such as engineering, plumbing, HVAC technicians, etc. are held in high regard unlike here in the US, where we tend to categorize engineers as nerds and technicians as “less smart” or “unsuccessful.”</p>
<p>True, even though many professions that we hold in low regard are more stable and financially rewarding than those we hold in high regard. Take nursing. If your a male and you tell people that you want to become a nurse, you will be laughed at. Of course, the people laughing at you are the same ones who are pursuing useless liberal arts majors with no job prospects. </p>
<p>I don’t know how engineering is perceived in Germany, but I think here in the US many people perceive it as a foreigner’s profession. After all, in doctoral programs, foreigners outnumber Americans while in undergraduate programs the ratio is roughly 50:50.</p>
<p>Homer acts like since outsourcing exists, it must be so drastic that engineers have to relocate out of the country. For some reason he can’t understand while outsourcing happens, there engineering employment in the USA STILL continues to grow.</p>
<p>I told him that outsourcing is a natural thing. Part of the business units will relocate outside the USA for sure. It’s unavoidable. But more or less we have a complex economy. If you don’t benefits other forginers, you don’t have trading. If you don’t reduce the spending the net profit will be lower.</p>
<p>Giving up some thousands of workers isn’t irresponsible. It’s simply a solution. HP reduce like 1/4 of the total workers and it is now the largest personal computer company.</p>
<p>Actually we should be glad that there is outsourcing. If everyone works only under some corporates, there would be little startups and fewer impressive “innovations”.</p>
<p>Jwxie’s post mirrors my thoughts somewhat. As a disclaimer though, it’s a somewhat idealistic opinion, but I’ll go ahead and put it out there. I think that the U.S., with its amazing academic institutions as well as being a center for world class R&D, should embrace outsourcing in some respect. Why keep our society from moving forward when we can give off the ‘boring’ stuff to the other countries who would be very grateful to have foreign companies help their economies grow.</p>
<p>Of course this is incredibly difficult for a country that is so large, for one, and also has so many people with manual labor jobs. It’s just not ethical to say to others, ‘You’re not skilled enough so you must move to another country.’</p>
<p>Anyway, just my thoughts.</p>
<p>EDIT: Of course though if such an American society were to ever exist, it could have a number of problems, though I haven’t given it enough thought to come up with some solid reasons why the good would outweigh the bad.</p>
<p>german is ALWAYS a good language to learn for engineers…but so is spanish (many american engineers work in central america) and chinese and japanese</p>
<p>"Vito said she had not expected to see so many unemployed engineers, especially when there is always talk about a shortage of scientists. “This is something that needs to be drilled down on,” she said. “If these folks are unemployed right now, we have some great talent sitting on the sideline.” </p>
<p>And a report done by the Brookings Institution back in 07 found that 17% of software engineering jobs are likely to be outsourced:</p>
<p>“At least 17 percent of computer programming, software engineering, and data entry jobs are likely to be offshored in particular metropolitan areas. Employment of computer programmers, data entry keyers, and software engineers (applications) is projected to fall by at least 17 percent between 2004 and 2015 in Bergen-Passaic, NJ; Boston, MA; Boulder, CO; Danbury, CT; Denver, CO; Hartford, CT; Minneapolis, MN; Nashua, NH; Newark, NJ; Orange County, CA; San Francisco, CA; San Jose, CA; Stamford, CT; and Wilmington, DE because of service offshoring.”</p>
<p>Any chance of outsourcing bureaucrats? How about politicians? Union leaders? Liberal arts grads? Business majors?</p>
<p>Take them, we’ll pay for shipping and handling. For the love of God just take them all!*</p>
<p>*All sales are final. No refunds or exchanges. In case of financial turmoil pass them on to the next idiot country willing to give them shelter.</p>
<p>And where do you propose those who lose their jobs to outsourcing find new ones genius? There are no jobs out there. Is 15,000 unemployed engineers in Pennsylvania not enough? Should we double that number? Triple it? Maybe we should give engineers an apron and have them flipping burgers at McDonalds…</p>
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