http://www.ieeeusa.org/policy/POLICY/2002/12nov02.pdf

“New Economy Workforce Utilization Practices Are Putting American Engineers at Risk
One of IEEE-USA’s principal concerns is that recent increases in engineering unemployment
may not be a short term, cyclical phenomenon, but the result of a much more fundamental
structural change in engineering utilization that could have a long-term negative impact on our
nation’s security and economy. We are apprehensive that current engineering workforce
management practices are driven by cost savings that shorten the careers of U.S. engineers,
while increasing our nation’s reliance on temporary foreign workers, short-term contract
employees (perma-temps), and the exportation of engineering work to lower cost, off-shore
locations. The corporate mantra seems to have become more, better, faster, cheaper; and when it
comes to workers, more is always better and cheaper is best.
These changing labor practices make engineering jobs less secure and careers more tenuous than
ever. U.S. engineers – new graduates, middle age and older professionals – are having a harder
and harder time getting and keeping jobs in an economy in which technologists are treated as a
disposable commodity.

I don’t know about the States, but here in the UK the term “engineer” has become devalued through incorrect use. Too often I hear someone say something like “I’ve have called out an engineer to fix my heating boiler”, when they have actually called out a technician. It’s not just the public, even the maintenance companies sending the technician will refer to him/her as an “engineer”. Makes me sad, to think that great (and not so great) engineers are now put in the same group as mere technicians.