The Administration Discovers Shortage of Engineers

George Rebane

[This piece is the first of a four part series on taxes, jobs, and income that includes, in order of posting, 'The Administration Discovers Shortage of Engineers', 'Higher Tax Rates = Lower Revenues',  'More Green Companies Heading for Greener Pastures', 'Employment and Income Inequality'.]

The shortage of native technical talent in America has been known to those who read for at least twenty years.  The shortage became apparent during the Reagan administration, but the hullaballoo created by the personal computer and interactive multimedia technologies overshadowed the acknowledgement that it was the engineers and other techies who created that new wealth engine – it was not the MBAs and the lawyers.

But institutional venture capitalists helped promulgate the myth that propeller heads did only, you know, propeller head stuff, whatever that was before they finally showed up with a marketable product.  The real wealth was created by business suits and legal beagles.  Besides, it is much easier to get an MBA or a law degree.  So native enrollments in tech schools started dropping, but not to worry, kids from overseas flocked to our excellent university programs in technology.

As the years passed and young people graduated from high schools with advanced placement programs in self-esteem, they began to discover that it was even easier to get degrees in black studies, environment management, comparative social justice, and God knows what else.  And what the hell, with one of those sheepskins in your shorts you could always BS your way into a government job.

Well, the world changed in the interval.  The Great Doubling came and no one noticed - they still don’t because it’s not visible from where they stuck their heads (RR keyword 'Great Doubling').  The foreign graduates began more and more to go back to their own countries instead of Silicon Valley to start their businesses.  With the US headed for European socialism and their own lands heading toward capitalism, the decision on where to start a business was easy.

Now we have the situation where no one gives that big rat’s asset if you’re a lawyer or have an MBA.  You need an MBA today to be seriously considered to run a Jiffy-Lube, and lawyers are making as little as $35/hr in New York just to get some part time work.  Most certainly, nobody overseas wants to hire such Americans for a ‘fair day’s wages’.  And forget it if you have a degree in Latino Perspectives.

So now President Obama sagely informs the nation that we need at least 10,000 new engineers every year - I am sure that is a brown number.  But it finally acknowledges a desperate national need, and a need that cannot be filled with the crap they teach kids in our public K-12 grades.  Other nations are graduating many times that number of engineers and technical workers annually, and it is they who now build the fastest computers, best cars, smartest robots, and merrily hack their way into our nation’s most sensitive financial, industrial, and defense networks.  (That last one is perhaps the scariest story of all for another time.)

Our kids still proclaim that they ‘don’t do numbers’, instead they are being taught their ‘rights’ and the ‘rights of nature’ under new systems of international social justice.  When was the last time any of us examined the qualifications of our unionized K-12 teachers, or spoke up at a board of education meeting?

 

Comments

[Barry Pruett]

GR said: "Our kids still proclaim that they ‘don’t do numbers’, instead they are being taught their ‘rights’ and the ‘rights of nature’ under new systems of international social justice."

People without a significant math background tend to have difficulty understanding complex systems tending to not appreciate the consequences of actions. Math is fundamental to one's development in logic and reasoning.

We are in the process of raising two fine, young female engineers - both math freaks. It is a daily conversation.

[wmartin]

Shortage of engineers? Seems like an easy enough thing to prove.

If there's been a steady increase in inflation-corrected salaries for engineers over time...shortage. If the pay has been static or dropping....no shortage.

'Engineer' is an overly broad term in any case. Do you mean what the public might think of as engineers (civil, mechanical, petroleum, etc.)? EE's? or computer programmers (usually nothing like an engineer, but lumped in somehow)?

[George Rebane]

Good distinction wmartin. I naturally supposed engineers with an engineering degree, and NOT people who are limited to writing code in some high level development environment.

My experience in finding engineers (includes computer science degrees) has been a constant since the 1980s. But the engineers I sought had to have a hefty background in the systems sciences.

[wmartin]

It seems to me that to keep things straight, everyone is best off separating engineers and engineering from the vast majority of IT jobs, both programming and maintenance.

Practically no software jobs require much beyond high school algebra (if that), have no professional certification, and in many cases gain little from post-secondary education I think. Given the amount of OJT and domain knowledge, you can argue that creating programmers and sysadmins would be better suited to a system based on apprenticeship rather than formal education.

In terms of the more rigorous engineering studies, assuming that production of goods is moving overseas, it seems to me that engineering which involves product development would naturally follow the factory over time. Regardless of the quality of your educational system, labor price gradients are real and overwhelmingly favor the third world.

Of course, given the situation with H1B's and their brethren, we can bring third world pricing and job situations into our own home.

[Mikey McD]

Despite 'bottom of the barrel' math/science test scores versus other countries US students still rank #1 in... (drum roll).... confidence.

Jimmy Fallon's monologue...

School's in Arkansas will be forced to verify that students are legal citizens... how will school officials know if a student is foreign? Answer: He/she will have higher test scores.

[Todd Juvinall]

I was always crappy at math, never got more than a "B" so I did other things. I did speech class and civics. Those two classes earned me ZIP in real income. I should have listened to my pop.

[D. King]

Barry,

May I humbly suggest this?

http://www.parallax.com/Store/Education/KitsandBoards/tabid/182/CategoryID/67/List/0/SortField/0/Level/a/ProductID/320/Default.aspx

Everything they need to start experimenting.

The kit is complete and can be used as soon as they get it.

The book has step by step explanations of what is happening in the chip.

Check out the home page and all the sensors they can learn to interface to.

[Douglas Keachie]

The taxpayers of California who educated the "greatest generation" in a heavily subsidized UC system, are now balking at passing on what they got. I paid $80 a semester at UC Berkeley in 1964. Gasoline was 25 cents a gallon. To make up for what taxpayers, especially corporations are not chipping in, tuition is now headed for $12,500 a semester.

Or, if the price of gasoline rose in step, we would now be paying $37.50 a gallon. Stick it to the younger generation...the older generation got their educations, got their cash, and are going to hang onto every last shortsighted cent of it.

Worse yet, with tuitions like that, and the loans that go with them, we set ourselves up for a generation that will go abroad to work, and skip out on the impossible to pay back loans. good luck with that, USA. No click throughs from me on the ads at the bottom of this page.

[John S]

Great piece George.
I did notice you are coming dangerously close to questioning our teachers and education system. Like Douglas above, you might be safer assigning the blame on other things like fuel costs or big corporations. Just be careful, the Union thugs can come and shut your blog site down or bust your knee caps.
And I must say, as an older person I did suckle at the teet for a lessor fee than today. For that I am sorry. But then I sent my daughter through graduation at UC Davis, so they did get another shot at me.

[wmartin]

"Worse yet, with tuitions like that, and the loans that go with them, we set ourselves up for a generation that will go abroad to work"

It's probably worth asking yourself whether the high tuitions caused the loans, or whether the access to the loans caused the high tuitions.

I'd be surprised if it gets any easier over time to go out-of-country for a job, and it ain't easy now. As populations rise, some resources deplete, and times get a little tight, we are seeing massive immigration being viewed more and more as a blight by desirable countries.

[wmartin]

" Like Douglas above, you might be safer assigning the blame on other things like fuel costs or big corporations"

I usually just blame Halliburton and Ronald Reagan. It's a big life simplifier.

[D. King]

wmartin-

“The Obama administration intensified a crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants…”

***“As populations rise, some resources deplete, and times get a little tight, we are seeing massive immigration being viewed more and more as a blight by desirable countries.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304186404576387843087137216.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

“Officials of ICE, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, said the audited companies operate in areas defined as "critical infrastructure and key resources," including food production,…”

Sí, se puede!

[Douglas Keachie]

There is a difference between a chemical engineer freshly minted from UC Berkeley and a non English speaking, 4th grade educated person, when it comes to finding employment abroad. You are comparing apples to orangutangs.

[wmartin]

“The Obama administration intensified a crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants…”

LOL. He'll no more crack down in a serious way than he'll quit having Bernanke run the printing press. Between ConAgra, the potential for Democratic voters, and pandering for the Hispanic vote, Obama&Co will keep the floodgates open.

"There is a difference between a chemical engineer freshly minted from UC Berkeley..."

Still not so easy to emigrate if you are doing it in a legal fashion. Other countries have this odd need to keep jobs for the locals.

Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if most chemical engineers coming out of the Cal system weren't foreign nationals (that's shorthand for 'Asian' I suppose) to begin with. Natural born citizens are busy going to UC Davis to pick up their degrees in Chicana Studies or psychology.

[Douglas Keachie]

And what wonderful locals they do provide to those in the USA who outsource USA jobs:

Nepotism and corruption

While a universal phenomenon, nepotism and corruption are more prominent in Asia then in the USA. As offshoring companies pay above average wages they are natural dumping ground for all sorts of relatives of influential politicians and top IT managers. That means that such companies have high internal overhead and top heavy bureaucracy. Here is one telling comment related to the lowest type of offshoring, helpdesk offshoring:

When we debrief the Indian reps, they always say the same things: "Sir, I did the necessary and escalated the call. The customer has become irritated." "Sir, the customer asked me something new. I have pooped myself and now must ask for an upgrade of the incident". "Sir, I am not prepared for this. I have a decent job that pays me a living wage solely because of who my parents are." The caste system is alive and well, and working for all the Kumars and Rajs of the world, thank you very much... "I graduated first in my class with a master's at age 21 in English studies, but I only learned by rote and cheated most the time. This is acceptable."

Webliography

"Discarded and Demoralized"

Disturbing Defeatism

[Harrison2005] Warren Harrison The Sabateur Within IEEE Software. From the Editor

[NTAC2005] United States Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) Insider Threat Study

Report 1 Illicit Cyber Activity in the Banking and Finance Sector pdf - 107 Kb Press Release
Report 2 Computer System Sabotage in Critical Infrastructure Sectors pdf - 164 Kb
- Press Release
- Executive Summary

[HBS2004] The Offshoring Revolution HBS Working Knowledge

[Greg Goodknight]

wmartin writes "Practically no software jobs require much beyond high school algebra (if that), have no professional certification, and in many cases gain little from post-secondary education I think."

Guess what, practically no electrical engineering jobs have any professional certification either. You either have a real degree, or you don't. Employers are able to figure out who you are by considering who granted your (yes) four year degree, and by talking to you for a few minutes, a few hours or (in one case, a job that brought me to Grass Valley) a couple days of interviewing.

I think what wmartin is considering a 'programming' job is glorified data entry; software technicians. No, software engineering is remarkably like electrical engineering, with a great deal of overlap. It really does take a serious four year degree and an apprenticeship to get started.

We aren't short of engineers, we're short of engineers willing to work for peanuts and get jerked around. A room full of H1B immigrants are more docile.

[Greg Goodknight]

again, wmartin writes "Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if most chemical engineers coming out of the Cal system weren't foreign nationals (that's shorthand for 'Asian' I suppose) to begin with. Natural born citizens are busy going to UC Davis to pick up their degrees in Chicana Studies or psychology."

No need to make a completely uninformed guess, the UC Berkeley College of Chemistry (reputed to be the top department in the world) commencement program is online:
http://chemistry.berkeley.edu/commencement/address/pdf/commencement-program-2011.pdf

Non-Euro names predominate among the Bachelor's recipients, but it seems the other way around among the doctorates.

No, many of the obviously Asian named students are born in the US, but their immigrant parents made sure they could master things like Chemistry or Chemical Engineering.

[Greg Goodknight]

Keachie hallucinates, "The taxpayers of California who educated the "greatest generation" in a heavily subsidized UC system, are now balking at passing on what they got. I paid $80 a semester at UC Berkeley in 1964. Gasoline was 25 cents a gallon. To make up for what taxpayers, especially corporations are not chipping in, tuition is now headed for $12,500 a semester."

Sorry Keach, but most of the so called "greatest generation" didn't go to college, and the UC system is so top heavy with a bloated bureaucracy and professors in weak disciplines. Corporations are so heavily taxed and regulated in California they are mostly going elsewhere where the Keachie's of California can't touch them. Many remain, but silicon valley is a shadow of its former self.

[Russ Steele]

George,

My brother-in-law spent most of his career in the Department of Education and he said that the engineering shortage has been know since the 1970s and the Department tackled the issues. Studies showed that elementary and high schools were not turing out a product of sufficient quality and quantity to meet the demand for engineers at the University level. They launched programs to retrain the teachers in science and math, but finally realized they could not make a dent in the problem, too many entrenched interests.

When i joined TRW in 1980 they had a contract from the Air Force Logistic Command to study the engineering shortage issue, as computer controlled systems were entering the inventory and Logistic Command would need large groups of systems and software engineers to keep the software up-to-date. The projected engineering shortage had strategic implications. Sadly the solution was not more engineers, but to make the existing one more productive, thus we launched a number of program to make maintaining weapon systems software more efficient, with fewer errors.

The engineering shortage has been know for over 40 years, a generation and still we have been unable to fix it, and there are no solutions on the horizon. No space programs to inspire students to become engineers, or the teachers need to teach them.

[wmartin]

"I think what wmartin is considering a 'programming' job is glorified data entry; software technicians. "

That's starting to become an exercise in taxonomy.

What I'm referring to are the programming jobs, which make up the vast bulk of the whole, which involve writing front ends for databases, scripts, overall just the general housekeeping of business practice. Writing to the metal and/or knowing the details of compilers/operating systems/protocols is really not needed for most jobs.

I think the other half of modern software 'engineering', the flavor of the week as is used to manage projects, is not well suited to schools and is mostly an OJT training issue.

In any case, it strikes me that pushing on the rope to produce more engineers or programmers via schooling doesn't do a tremendous amount of good. This is mostly about management of labor costs. If you actually believe in free markets, than you will pay more for talent, which will cause students to pick up those majors. So far as I can tell, the primary use of the engineering shortage emergency is to justify importation of cheap labor.

Not to say there aren't truly talented people brought in under H1B and related programs, it's just that the other 99% are grunts, the campesinos of the high tech world.

[Greg Goodknight]

wmartin says, "I think the other half of modern software 'engineering', the flavor of the week as is used to manage projects, is not well suited to schools and is mostly an OJT training issue."

The flavor of the week? The other half? I think you really don't have much of any clue about software engineering, as it is entirely unsuited to just OJT. There's a reason the Ciscos and Googles of the world are loaded up with BS/MS/Ph.D. software engineers, and it isn't 'flavor of the week' project management.

[wmartin]

"I think you really don't have much of any clue about software engineering, as it is entirely unsuited to just OJT. "

Perhaps then you could treat us to your experience in college as concerns Agile, pair programming, XP, scrums, or the hundreds of internal-only methodologies used in larger companies.

Generally, I'd say that software is a peculiar business, at least the writing part. It attracts people who work best alone, but in the higher end, requires team management and goals. It makes for odd bedfellows.

[George Rebane]

My experience corroborates the existence of two major levels of software development (using that as the taxonomic root). One involves heavy doses of system science tools and algorithmics. Out of it come new computer languages, new development environments, new system designs, solutions to long-known computational problems, and other advancements in what is generally known as computer science. In this area you definitely want a staff with a bunch of degrees, the higher the better.

The other arm can perhaps be called production programming. In these endeavors programmers maintain existing software based systems, and also build new ones to spec using existing development environments and methods/algorithms output from the computer science partition. Programmers here often come up with a mix of formal training and OJT.

Admittedly there is some blurring of the boundary, but when you talk to applicants and define the world as such, they have no problem identifying which part is their strong suit and where they want to work.

[Greg Goodknight]

There are two kinds of people: people who divide the world up into two kinds of people, and those that don't.

I think the dividing line you're imagining in your simplification of software job classifications is development vs. support. That wmartin thinks software engineers work any more independently than electrical (aka hardware) engineers speaks loudly. Hint... they really don't.

George, partitioning similar to your schemes has existed in aerospace among electrical and mechanical engineers since I first designed a circuit at Hughes to be taped up by a now long-obsolete and unemployed draftsman. Another way to look at it is the time frames being managed... hard engineering, whether hardware or software, happens over months and years. Many support or production tasks are day to day, and technicians or 'associate engineers' do rise to the task with something less than a BS.

Then there's QA functions, and I've met some spectacularly good software engineers who actually like torturing someone else's code to find the weak spots they suspect exist. All these things take varying talent and differing styles.

[D. King]

Logic is now programmable and with processor speeds what they are, the lines between hardware and software are blurring further.

http://www.microchip.com/

[George Rebane]

GregG - am familiar with the finer gradations you outlined. (I put myself through undergraduate years as an aerospace draftsman during summers, and started my engineering career as a circuit designer in an skunkworks circuits group for the same company before going back to grad school.) But what I would take exception to is your division of "development vs support". Production software engineering is further divided into product development, maintenance, customer support, ... . The computer science part that I described does almost no product development, instead it delivers the software technology that will be used by production software people to develop deliverable products. Not all companies need or can afford to run a rocket science group.

In my forty plus years in the business, if I would have been given product development work, or would have given my rocket science guys product development tasks, I/they would have quit. Apologies if this puts too fine a point on it, but it's fun comparing experiences.

[Greg Goodknight]

There is no blurring there

I've burned a few Microchip (tm) processors before (in fact, they're an outgrowth of a bizarre General Instruments processor that I was using when developing Intellivision products at Mattel Electronics in the early 80's). Those are embedded processors and usually have no semblance of an operating system.

Hardware is hardware, software is software, firmware or embedded software are software but, like those who develop device drivers for linux, windows or Mac, the embedded software engineer needs to have an idea about what the hardware is doing.

[Greg Goodknight]

George, I think we're interpreting 'product development' and 'production software' somewhat differently, and there are few companies who have separate groups of software toolmakers just cranking out libraries for the peasants to use.

I was trying to make the point you can't just divide software into two puzzle pieces, but if you were it would be different than this thread started off with :)

[D. King]

The MCUs have 16 I/O pins that can be programmed with muli-function directives: simple gate, PWM, Freq out, Freq in, DTMF…

Here is the Parallax book for Stamps:

http://www.parallax.com/dl/docs/prod/stamps/web-BSM-v2.2.pdf

This is what I recommended to Barry.

[Greg Goodknight]

Back to the original topic above, if you want to help along science and technology in secondary schools, get rid of (or at least deemphasize) AP Statistics, a two semester class, and add a two semester sequence of Formal Logic, and Probability. Both are mostly non existent in the current high school curriculum.

[D. King]

“I am sure that is a brown number. But it finally acknowledges a desperate national need, and a need that cannot be filled with the crap they teach kids in our public K-12 grades. Other nations are graduating many times that number of engineers and technical workers annually, and it is they who now build the fastest computers, best cars, smartest robots, and merrily hack their way into our nation’s most sensitive financial, industrial, and defense networks. (That last one is perhaps the scariest story of all for another time.)”

Start them off early with fun projects.

You’ve got to spark the kids’ interest.

Like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw7wTHngq8I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLj1A0oUt3o&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3iQENGL6iI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V6K8QIia7E&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFqNmntFEnE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi1RGJZvBlk

[George Rebane]

Agreed GregG. When I write in probability problems into TechTest, I always have to include enough of a tutorial to help them get off the dime because their background in probability is almost non-existent.

Besides, studying statistics while innocent of probability, is nothing but rote memorization of formulas.

[wmartin]

That wmartin thinks software engineers work any more independently than electrical (aka hardware) engineers speaks loudly."

Actually, the point I'm making is that many software engineers are poor at working in groups. My guess is that people with poor user interfaces often gravitate to software development. The irony is that a technical skill set that is often learned alone is practiced with others.

My primary split was between the practice of managing and running non-trivial software projects, which really does have a flavor-of-the-week angle vs. the technical details of languages, OS's, hardware, etc. A third lump of the work, of course, is domain knowledge.

College strikes me as an OK place to pick up the second group, but is not particularly good at the first and third.

[Greg Goodknight]

wmartin, where *did* you pick up those notions?

Here's an outline of a hardcore BSCS degree:
"Following an initial course in structured programming and problem solving [part of the "common core" program that includes the first two or three semesters taken by all math, chemistry, physics, engineering and biology majors there, meaning the same math as math majors, the same physics as physics majors, etc], students take foundation courses in principles of computer science, discrete mathematics, data structures and program development, and logic for computer science. These are followed by kernel courses in algorithms, computer architecture and operating systems, programming languages, and software development. Each student's program is rounded out with at least three electives chosen from advanced architecture, advanced operating systems, artificial intelligence, compiler design, computer graphics, computer networks, computer vision, databases, knowledge-based systems, neural networks, parallel and real-time computation, and theory of computation."

That ain't just learning enough Java to toss out yet another silly game app for the iPhone or Android.

[Greg Goodknight]

"Start them off early with fun projects.

You’ve got to spark the kids’ interest."

Fills the trendy 'hands on' so popular with K-12 teachers, but won't do much to help with the real gatekeepers, *mastery* of elementary arithmetic and algebra.

[wmartin]

wmartin, where *did* you pick up those notions?"...

What, that college doesn't prepare you to deal with truly large programming projects or to deal with large teams?

or, secondly, that college doesn't teach you the type of business they do at Schlumberger or VISA?

Jeesh, I can't imagine.

[Greg Goodknight]

George, great minds sometimes think alike ;)

I took an upper division/graduate level intro probability class followed by its intro statistics twin at a CSU mumble-mumble years ago. I was happy to learn, and mostly forget, the Statistics, but I was amazed at how similar probability and logic were when I subsequently took a Formal Logic class.

Looking for someone who can say it better than I, here's an interesting take on the two:
"Probability Theory As Extended Logic"
http://bayes.wustl.edu/

Not only has probability theory and logic been professionally *very* useful, what passes for 'common knowledge' logic is woefully inadequate for everyday life, let alone technical fields. There's no reason a high school Logic class couldn't be taken before Algebra I. A student who isn't ready for Algebra I because of poor grounding in the arithmetic of fractions might find their interest in math sparked by success in Formal Logic.

[George Rebane]

As these pages witness, I am a strong promoter of starting kids out in math and science from the gitgo, i.e. kindergarten, and then straight through junior high to the beginning calculus courses. High school would have some math skill maintenance courses and would concentrate on the history, literature, civics, etc, i.e. the classes that kids with a beginning social awareness would be interested in. In short, tech emphasis first, humanities emphasis last in the K-12 years.

[Greg Goodknight]

Now, hold it right there, pardner.

I can't imagine Calculus in any reasonable form in Jr. High. The California content standard is an expectation of Algebra I by the 8th grade, and that is beyond far too many students in the state as it is.

Then maybe there's time for Geometry, maybe Stats, Algebra II, Trig/Math Analysis, Calculus. Get through that is roughly that order and a kid who is smitten by math or the hard sciences can hit the ground running at whatever college or university they land. Not trying to remember what they had.

Or, if they are a late bloomer, they can start working to catch up and maybe take a detour into Sierra before a CSU, UC or whatever. I think a strength, not a weakness, of the American system is the elimination of the tracking inherent in a euro-style Gymnasium/trade school forking, before a kid has a chance of gaining some maturity and buckling down.

There's no reason a kid can't take good humanities along with decent math and science in high school, assuming their high school is capable of delivering it, and their feeder schools were also doing their jobs.

The worst possible sequencing would be to rush kids through math they are woefully

[George Rebane]

GregG - maybe I didn't make myself clear; the math early curriculum that I outlined is what I would do were I king.

[Greg Goodknight]

But George...remember, as Euclid said to King Ptolemy, there is no royal road to geometry! :)

[Greg Goodknight]

"What, that college doesn't prepare you to deal with truly large programming projects or to deal with large teams?

or, secondly, that college doesn't teach you the type of business they do at Schlumberger or VISA?"

Sheesh, indeed. You seem to be making the claim that since college can't teach one everything, no one should bother to learn anything before they get hired. The fact is Schlumberget and VISA aren't in the business of teaching algorithms, data structures, programming languages or 'your friend, the scripting language du jour'.

Being a member of a large team just doesn't take that much orientation. I've worked on source code touched by 10E4 engineers, and it didn't take long to understand what I needed to do. The hard part was the engineering I walked in the door knowing how to do.

[Brad Croul]

"President Obama sagely informs the nation that we need at least 10,000 new engineers every year".
"About 150,000 students who majored in engineering, computer science, information technology, and math will collect bachelor's degrees." - CNN Money article - http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/29/news/international/china_engineering_grads.fortune/index.htm

I hope they learned to speak Chinese since 140,000 of those engineers are not needed here.

[Douglas Keachie]

You might want to try out Amazon's Mechanical Turk for online jobs. The pay rate is amazing low.

Jobs are never going to come back to the USA, as Megacorps have found a new market for their goods, the average overseas citizens who now produce their products. Until USA wages match or fall below India's and China's, the stuff will be made abroad. And it will be engineered abroad too, until American engineers accept the same or lower wages as their Asian continent counterparts. Brave New World.

Tighten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride....

http://www.onlineearningblog.com/earn-money-doing-tasks-with-amazon-mechanical-turk/