Plans are under way for the National Engineers Week 2003 celebration, to be held Feb. 16-22. The event brings together engineers, corporations, students and teachers to expose young people to engineering through activities, educational programs, contests and award ceremonies. It's all done to boost public interest in and encourage the study of engineering.

One thing occurred to me as I read the press release about the event: Would students and young people be given the whole story about engineering? Would the National Engineers Week agenda include any discussion of the rising jobless rate among engineers? What about the fact that many organizations are moving engineering jobs overseas, especially in design engineering, to lower labor costs? Or the perception that the EE labor force has become a disposable commodity because corporations no longer want to pay high salaries to U.S. engineers ? Would the students hear about any of that? My instincts told me no.

To confirm my suspicions, I called the spokesman for National Engineers Week 2003. He wasn't able to find a contact to speak with me by press time.

I phoned the National Society of Professional Engineers, a major sponsor of the event, thinking the group might be interested in providing a reality check about the profession. But a spokeswoman who handles PR for the association and for its American Engineering Campaign to raise engineers' profile among the general public said the NSPE “hasn't touched on that issue [unemployment].”

It doesn't seem right to talk about engineering without mentioning the currently high rate of unemployment among engineers or the profession's susceptibility to peaks and valleys in demand. To do so is to look at the engineering world through rose-colored glasses.

Engineering unemployment has been on the increase since the first quarter of 2001, and the second quarter saw the number of jobless among all engineering disciplines rise to 85,000. For electrical engineers in particular, it stood at 34,000.

Layoffs among engineering organizations are rampant, and many engineers are concerned that they won't manage to keep their jobs through this prolonged downturn.

Electronics giants such as Intel Corp. are moving into India and China in a big way, and it's not for the scenery. Yes, the electronics markets are growing there, but it also happens that local engineering salaries are much lower than those in the United States. In China, EEs draw an average annual salary of $8,000.

I am all for introducing young people to engineering and technology careers and boosting awareness of those professions, but let's give them the information they need to make an informed choice. Let's make sure the National Engineers Week 2003 agenda includes some real information about the state of the engineering profession.