> The new investment in people is happening in Germany, Poland, Scandinavia

These are shitty job tbh. Friend of a friend worked on designing and testing windscreen wiper motors in Poland. Company did a round of layoffs and there are zero jobs in the country. There is one job in US - nobody will sponsor a visa. He doesn't know the language to work in Asia.

He switched to software.

OP made clear they were talking about automation engineers, not test or design jobs.