It's starting...

It's starting...  The number of electrical engineers in the U.S. declined last year, by 35,000 positions.  The growth of software engineers in the U.S. is also declining, and may go negative next year or the year after.

The article I linked concludes that the people claiming we don't graduate enough STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) students are wrong, as witness the decline in positions and the growth overseas.  I think they've picked the wrong problem – I think those jobs are going overseas because the education systems in so many places are producing better qualified graduates.  Just to pick on one example, in which I have personal experience: a software company looking for talent isn't going to hire the first engineer they run into – and most of the time, they won't just hire the best engineer they find locally.  They're going to look all over the world, and pick the best and brightest that they can attract from anywhere at all.  It no longer matters what country a software engineer works in.  The last company I worked for had software engineers who lived in five different countries – and they've expanded the part outside the U.S. since I left.  The reason is not economics; in some cases, those foreign engineers cost more...