June 2005

Five US technical job classifications show employment drop, one shows steep increase

WASHINGTON (15 June 2005) -- Five major engineering and computer job classifications showed a drop in employment in the first quarter of 2005 vs. the 2004 average, while one showed a large increase, according to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The biggest drop was among computer hardware engineers (18,000), followed by computer software engineers (13,000), computer programmers (8,000), electrical and electronics engineers (8,000) and computer and information systems managers (5,000). Contrasted with this loss of 52,000 jobs, the BLS reported a gain of 54,000 jobs among computer scientists and systems analysts.

"While we are encouraged by the employment growth among computer scientists and systems analysts, the continuing shrinkage of other technical specialties signals that all is not well in electrotechnology professions," IEEE-USA President Gerard A. Alphonse said.

Percentage-wise, the computer hardware engineers workforce declined by 18.8 percent, while computer scientists and systems analysts experienced 7.7 percent growth. The other four job classifications fell modestly, and the overall increase in technical employment was less than one percent (0.1).

This table summarizes the BLS data:

IEEE-USA is an organizational unit of the IEEE. It was created in 1973 to advance the public good and promote the careers and public policy interests of the more than 220,000 technology professionals who are U.S. members of the IEEE. The IEEE is the world's largest technical professional society. For more information, go to http://www.ieeeusa.org.