Amen!
Further, how do you define shortage? Increasing wage rates? Unemployment? Want ads? Unable to find work in your profession?
What period of time is the Sloan Foundation study covering? No statistics, study methodology, survey basis or other support was given - just the opinion.
Yes there is a shortage of engineers willing to work for depressed wages.
Last year only 40% of Duke University engineering graduates ended up in engineering. Simply because there are more money in finance, law and other fields. Engineering carries very little prestige as a profession and compensation is too low.
Sloan foundation is not stating just opnions, they do research into the subject matter and their data was presented to Congress. On the other hand you as one person cannot be an objective judge, in fact you present just an opinion! Read the article,
it says "researchers Rand Corp., Harvard Uni, the National Bureau of Economic Research and Stanford, have all come to the same conclusion".
I know that you run your own business, so if you are looking for an engineer and can't find one, all you need to do is place an add that reads:
Looking for a competent electrical engineer, salary 150 000 USD per year, pay relocation expenses, 5 weeks vacation, free medical.
Your phone will not stop ringing!
The simple truth is that current average salary for a process control engineer in US is only 86 000 USD per year. A union electrician in Chicago area makes 42 USD per hour.
Salaries have been depressed by outsourcing and by H1B visas.
Current cap on H1B is 65 000 per year, big business is lobbying to raise this to over 100 000 per year. So in the future look for even more depressed salaries.
There are law firms out there holding classes that teach US corporations how to advertize a position so that no one in US will apply, that will open the door to sponsor someone from India willing to work for peanuts.
Shortage of what kind of engineers?
All engineers and scientists. Please read the article!
Given the decline in manufacturing's contribution to the US GDP over the past few decades, it should come as no surprise that demand for engineers here in the States is flat or even down. Still, that alone is not evidence of a vast conspiracy among "the current government as well as scores of special interest groups" to create a surplus of engineers to keep engineering salaries low. My guess is that the single biggest influence on any oversupply is colleges trying to make sure that their engineering programs stay fully enrolled.
No I am not saying that there is a conspiracy. Conspiracy would require some kind of coordinated effort. That is not how this came about. It developed gradually over the course of last 10 years. More and more Companies started to jump onto the outsoursing bandwagon. Colleges are not the single biggest influence in the oversupply, but they do contribute. Colleges are nowadays focused on getting maximum foreign students enrolled because that's where the money is. For example Purdue Uni charges lot more per semester to Chinese students than to local students (even those out of state don't pay nowhere near as much as foreigners). Tuition in colleges went up on average 51% in past 5 years!