What STEM shortage? Electrical engineering lost 35,000 jobs last year

Despite an expanding use of electronics in products, the number of people working as electrical engineers in U.S. declined by 10.4% last year.

The decline amounted to a loss of 35,000 jobs and increased the unemployment rate for electrical engineers from 3.4% in 2012 to 4.8% last year, an unusually high rate of job losses for this occupation.

There are 300,000 people working as electrical engineers, according to U.S. Labor Department data analyzed by the IEEE-USA. In 2002, there were 385,000 electrical engineers in the U.S...

The number of employed software developers, the largest IT occupation segment, increased by only 1.75%, to 1.1 million, a gain of 19,000. The unemployment rate for developers last year was 2.7%, which is still elevated, according to Hira.

Jobs for computer systems analysts increased by 35,000, to 534,000, an increase of 7%, but Hira said it is the most common H-1B occupation and that nearly all those gains went to H-1B visa holders...

The unemployment rate for electrical engineers exceeded other engineering categories. For mechanical engineers, the unemployment rate was 2.7%, and for civil engineers, 3.4%.

In the computer hardware engineering field, which employs about 90,000, there was a decline of 1,000 jobs from 2012, setting the unemployment rate at 2.7%...

Claims of shortages of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) workers "have no support in fact and no connection to reality, " Hira said...