Outsourcing: The Cause of Lower Salaries for US Engineers?

Filed in archive Outsourcing Issues on October 21, 2006

It is no secret that outsourcing "some" (take note of the word, some) engineering tasks are being outsourced to other countries because of the universal reason of cost-cutting. This brings us to the speculation that outsourcing might be the culprit why the salaries of engineers from the US is going down.

The issue also grew rapidly with the news given by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). According to NAE, as different logistical barriers to performance of engineering work at remote locations continue to erode, the global pool of trained engineers is growing. This news just show that U.S. engineers are currently competing with engineers from other countries whose salaries are 40%-80% lower than their current ones.

Many US engineers agree that outsourcing contributes with the lowering of their compensation. Survey done by Electronic Design shows a 40% rate of engineers agreeing with this speculation. Aside from that, US engineers predict that the factory situation which happened before could also happen to the Engineering industry.