[creer]

This has been the case for over 40 years by now. Europe has been lucky or has made the best of it, but imagine: 40 years of hobbled economy!

But European firms have found some workarounds. For example, lots of engineers are owned, I mean, salaried by service companies who then contract that manpower to whoever wants some. A large company can then modulate year after year how many engineers of what kind they want to work for them. It adds a layer of intermediaries who collect a profit and shuffle paperwork - more costly - but engineers expect less salary to begin with. And this provides less control on who exactly does the work - which perhaps doesn't matter for the bulk of workers. But that's all easier than firing lots of people. It also makes it much easier to modulate between local and offshore engineering groups.

Pooling engineers is big business.