"MisFortune 500" List of Displaced High-Tech Workers Released

Staff -- Semiconductor International, 12/1/1998

The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Inc. (IEEE-USA, Washington, D.C.), the world's largest technical professional society with over 220,000 U.S. members, released hundreds of letters from high-tech professionals, arguing against the existence of a technical-worker shortage and reporting their own displacement from the job market. The letters can be viewed on the organization's new "MisFortune 500'' website (http://www.ieeeusa.org/usab/forum/h-1b).

IEEE-USA president John R. Reinert said that "These letters put a human face on the crisis in our profession, an epidemic of age discrimination that will worsen if Congress approves 150,000 additional indentured, high-tech guest-workers without even preventing U.S. companies from legally replacing U.S. workers with cheaper H-1B visa holders."

Prior to this, the IEEE-USA had released evidence of a growing oversupply of U.S. technical professionals. According to the organization, high technology industries have cut 4X as many jobs nationally in 1998 than in 1997, imposing more layoffs and hiring freezes than almost every other sector of the economy. Job cuts have pushed the electrical and electronics engineering unemployment rate to 3.4% in the third quarter, an eight-fold increase since the beginning of 1998. A new study indicates that 50% more degreed technical professionals are working outside of their fields than the total number of professionals in the nation's science and engineering workforce. The IEEE-USA also referred to an Oct. 5 article in Computerworld, citing a survey of 100 contracting and consulting firms by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), which showed that the "overwhelming majority" have more programmers than they can use.