If you listen to conservative talk radio or read conservative opinion blogs, you probably saw a lot of criticism directed towards President Obama yesterday for blaming the high unemployment rate on technological advances in business. Here is the quote from Mr. Obama that was widely reported by conservative slanted media.
The other thing that happened though, this goes to the point you were just making, is there are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank you use the ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.
Conservative folks took this and ran with it. They are trying to make people believe that Obama is blaming unemployment on ATMs. For example here. Or here. Or here.
Notice that in all of those anti-Obama blogs and articles, people fail to include the second half of his statement. It reads as follows:
All these things have created changes in the economy, and what we have to do now, and that’s what this job council is all about, is identify where the jobs of the future are gonna be, how do we make sure that there’s a match between what people are getting trained for and the jobs that exist, and how do we make sure capital is flowing into those places with the greatest opportunity?
I’ve made it very clear in the past that I’m not a fan of Mr. Obama. I think he screwed up big time on health care and I hate his out-of-control government spending. I don’t think he’s a good president, and I will vote for any republican candidate over him in 2012.
But I’m not going take a coherent, valid statement of his, cut it in half, and then tell the world he’s an idiot.
Obama’s main point was that we need to educate more engineers in America to design ATMs and Kiosks and the technology that will replace those things in the future. This is what should have been in the news. A constructive idea that both liberals and conservatives can support.
But some stupid conservatives would rather focus on half of the statement and turn this constructive idea into a destructive attack. Now instead of spending time focusing on how to educate more engineers, these conservatives have created a fight out of nothing.
I hate stupid partisan politics. Check the news media tomorrow for a conservative who will defend Obama’s true statement and call out the liars who chopped up his statement, twisted his intentions, and erroneously painted Obama as an economic imbecile.
You won’t find it. The only place you’re going to get that kind of objective, non-partisan commentary is right here.
Now let’s talk about this Job Council’s recommendation or educating more engineers and see why it’s such a darn good idea.
American Engineers Have Jobs in this Recession
The point Obama was making with this Jobs Council is that the unemployment for engineers is very low (4.5% in 2010) and that we need more engineers to drive innovation and create new jobs in the future.
There’s a great article in Computer World (not surprisingly a non-political website) about how Obama’s Job Council plans to increase engineering graduates without spending much taxpayer money and relying on the private sector.
I love that this program is putting the onus on the private sector. I just wish Mr. Obama would take this approach more often.
Right now America graduates more visual arts and performing arts majors than we do science and engineering majors. This is disgusting. I have degrees in Math and Electrical Engineering. I also have a steady job that pays well. Coincidence? I think not.
I would have loved to be a performing arts major. Have you seen my videos? Given equitable job availability and starting salary, I would have picked performing arts over engineering faster than you can say, “Sorry Kevin, you’re actually not very good at performing.”
But there isn’t equitable job availability and pay. I knew that I could either be a starving artist, or a wealthy engineer who moonlights as an artist. I chose the latter.
So kids, when you are thinking about your college major, just remember that an engineering degree means you’ll have a good job, which means you’ll have money, which means you can buy nice things, which means you can afford a hot girlfriend, which is awesome. Following that logic, an engineering degree is awesome. Do it!
Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT at Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer of Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.
I also graduated with an engineering degree (Aero/Astro) from a top 3 program in that field. While I absolutely hate engineering (learned that about 3/4ths the way through the degree), I have been able to land a couple good paying jobs solely based on the fact I have an engineering degree. It opens alot of doors and it tells people a couple things:
1. You are good at math (even when that math mostly involves letters)
2. You are a good problem solver.
This translates into so many fields and is why so many engineers end up in management positions.
Even to this day I still get a couple head hunters emailing me trying to convince me to go back to engineering (and the numbers they throw around almost make me think about it).
This has been my experience as well. An engineering degree is a big fat stamp of approval on your analytical skills and employers of all types love that. If you can make it through an engineering degree is a no brainer career-wise.
This is advice that I know now, but nobody pushed engineering to me when I was young. I just fell into my engineering degree after 3 years of college. We need to be more vocal to young people about why they should study engineering.
Same for me. I learned I hated engineering and then went to work for a bank (although in the IT department). The point is, if you have an engineering degree, people know you’re smart.
Plus think of this: you can do a graduate degree in business without any undergrad business education. It doesn’t work the other way around.
There has always been decent jobs available for those good at math and science since it seems that there are many people who have no interest in the subjects. Some jobs will still be at risk for outsourcing but some of the more creative and bright individuals will always have something to do.
It’s true that we always need more people good at math and science. It’s also true that just proving you can learn these things makes employers believe you can learn just about anything, and opens up a lot of jobs in different fields.
Agreed. It is possible to do well economically without extremely good science, engineering and technology know how. It is much easier to do, however, when you are strong technologically.
Here are some posts on that topic
http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2007/07/07/economic-strength-through-technology-leadership/
http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2006/07/01/the-future-is-engineering/
http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2006/09/17/engineering-the-future-economy/
And, yes, an engineering degree is quite useful for yourself
http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2011/04/13/engineering-again-dominates-the-highest-paying-college-degree-programs/
I love those posts John. Thanks for sharing. We need to get the word out and let young people know that they can be very wealthy if they just learn engineering in college.
Kevin. I have no idea why you have such few subscribers. You have such high quality posts.
I think some issues with engineering degrees are that unless you have a friend or family member as an engineer, the average 18 year old doesn’t know what that is. Also, there is a definite gender bias as well. My little cousin is on of the few girls in her chem engineering courses. It seems like everyone should think of themselves as engineers, in that we can create and design. It’ll be interesting to see how the private sector gets more engineering graduates going.
Also very commendable that you are noting how crazy some right-winged radio stations are. I used to be uber-conservative and blindly agreeing with conservative pundits, but I started following their sources and what they were touting as fact. Wow. They can TOTALLY blow things out of proportion. Kudos for having opinions and checking up on the sources.
Good point Marilyn. I definitely agree that young people don’t know about engineering. I had no idea that I should be an engineer until I was half way through college. I was a straight A student in high school, especially good at math, and not a single teacher or counselor recommended that I major in engineering in college.
I was so excited to come home and write about how Obama doesn’t know economics, but then I actually watched the interview and I had to change directions. Stupid talk show hosts!
And thanks for the compliment. Feel free to tell your friends to subscribe! 🙂
You (and, I presume, Mr. Obama) totally missed the fact that nerds (and I mean “nerds” in the very nicest way) make the absolute best husbands, er, spouses (so as not to insult any female engineers who might be reading this). They are dependable, they are problem solvers, they always have a twidget at hand to fix 90% of whatever might need fixing….they are just all-round awesome.
I can say all the above from experience, having been married to a wonderful nerd for nearly 20 years. Sometimes I have to remind myself of these facts when I notice he’s wearing white sox and black pants….forgets to comb his hair….or doesn’t notice the gorgeous flowers along the street.
I really appreciate your remarks about the political programs. I find it absolutely disgusting that these commentators will take ANYthing the officeholder of the other party does, and twist it into a horrible thing. Why can’t they bother to inject the smallest recognition of competence, of good intention, of an attempt to do one’s best job? As a fiscal conservative and a social libertarian, I decry the worst of **both** sides, but I know that no one, of any party is ALL bad.
Excellent post, Kevin – but what would you expect from an engineer? 🙂 I am a relatively new subscriber, but I have really enjoyed your high-quality posts to date. Keep up the good work!
Thanks gharkness! I wish my girlfriend were more sympathetic to my desire to mismatch clothes and look generally disheveled. Although she did stop yelling at me for leaving the toilet seat up and started asking me nicely, so I’m trying really hard to fix that.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll do my best to keep pumping out quality posts! 😀
Hi Kevin,
I actually have an engineering degree and I am a women, but I am not sure people would think that I am smart for that. Right now I am unemployed as well, unable to find a job. But that is probably because I am in the wrong city in a wrong country (Hungary) if you want to make a carrier. Or because I am a women with 3 kids? I don’t know, but it is sad enough…
It was nice reading your post!
Yeah, an engineering degree is worth a lot more than an Art History degree. We have great universities here in the US and many engineering students are foreign students. It’s a big problem that US kids look down on engineers.
I agree. I work in health care and there are engineers popping up all over the place. It is no longer a job specific to mechanics and buildings. It is a very versatile job that can provide many different opportunities. Engineers are always needed nowadays.
I hate incomplete or out-of-context quoting as much as anybody, but frankly I don’t think the second half of Obama’s quote makes him look much smarter. The fact is that the dilemma of increasing business efficiency causing obsolete jobs has been around for hundreds of years and there is no reason to believe that there has been any special acceleration of it over the last couple of years that has caused the abnormally high unemployment rate.
And this business of “how do we make sure capital is flowing into those places with the greatest opportunity” which apparently is a problem that Obama thinks he has to solve: capital has *always* flowed into the areas of greatest opportunity. You can’t stop it if you tried, as our continually evolving whack-a-mole tax policy attests. The idea that some special council of experts needs to be convened to ensure it happens is purely technocratic, to put it politely.
I graduated with an Aero Engineering degree some years back and I have really not made best use of it. I didn’t enjoy working as an engineer and instead went into finance which I have to say is mind numbing. Now I
my mouse slipped, cont…..
Now I wonder what else I should do. I know there are so many opportunities for engineers but frustrated! I want to use my degree to open doors to challenging yet interesting careers which pay well. Finance has been challenging for all the wrong reasons and have found it to be generally monkey work like financal modelling, power point work, boring research etc which you could train a smart 16 year old do. However it pays well. Any ideas on exciting careers for engineering graduates which does not include working at a bank?
.If the United States really has a critical shortage of scientists and engineers why didnt this years graduates get showered with lucrative job offers and signing bonuses?.Thats the question that comes to my mind after reading about Barack Obamas plans to address the shortage we keep hearing about from blue-ribbon commissions of scientists and engineers. .Now Im all in favor of American technological innovation and Im glad to see Mister Obama promising to review the export restrictions that have been so damaging to the aerospace industry and that were promoted by John McCain because of what he called national-security risks .
I have an engineering degree and I have only been offered some temp jobs that have been canceled. You are not guaranteed anything. But your chances are better with an engineering degree most of the experience engineers are taking the lower jobs.
I have an MS in electrical engineering, I’ve been laid off twice since 2007 and struggle to find work, mostly because what I did has been outsourced to Asia. When I went to college the smartest students studied med, and if they couldn’t make it they studied engineering. If you couldn’t make it in engineering, then it was business. Now if you can’t make it in med, then just study business. I chose electrical engineering because I wanted to build electronics in the 80’s, I could have chosen medicine. I’ve seen recently places looking for engineers fresh out of college to train them in marketing. Yes, really? I think we should let Obama know that he’s full of %$# and we already have lots of engineers going off into other careers because of free trade and job outsourcing over the last 10-20 years. Does medicine or business need calculus or physics? Obama can spin the blame however he wants, but who really believes him anymore?
“So kids, when you are thinking about your college major, just remember that an engineering degree means you’ll have a good job, which means you’ll have money, which means you can buy nice things, which means you can afford a hot girlfriend, which is awesome. Following that logic, an engineering degree is awesome. Do it!”
I am an unemployed engineer with two master degrees and professional engineering license in two states. i cannot find a job in engineering to save the life of me. I have to laugh when i hear that engineers skills can be translated into many other fields. The problem is that with so many candidates, employers do not need to venture out of their job description to fill the positions. Thus, they will not gamble on someone that might be great but does not have the adequate experience.
Study accounting, you will earn more, the career is easier, and find a job in the end. Do not believe me? go to indeed.com and type civil engineer and then type accountant. See which one has more job postings….
Outsourced jobs will not come back. We do not need more engineers. There are plenty to choose from.
It is true that careers in accounting are often more lucrative and plentiful and anyone with a engineering degree could learn accounting with ease since it only involves the most basics of maths abilities. The reason for more accountancy based work and higher pay is because it is a crap career! I would rather earn 50% less and enjoy my job and actually add some real value. As an engineer I did consider gaining some accountancy qualifications but having spoken to many people in the industry I come to realise you need to be a certain type of person to do that job. i.e boring and you certainly don’t need to be overly smart. If you are not that person you will be just miserable, bored and maybe even get depressed.
Is it worth it? Same may still think so but hey it takes all sorts.