Posted on 11/26/2012 7:12:46 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In September, 238,000 American jobs went unfilled, despite employers’ best efforts. At the same time, unemployment was at 7.8 percent nationally. And believe it or not, this was no statistical oddity.
The manufacturing sector has long had trouble finding skilled applicants for its jobs. Around 48 percent of manufacturing companies are looking to hire, according to the most recent report from ThomasNet, a company that helps connect producers and suppliers. But 67 percent of manufacturing companies see a moderate to severe shortage of skilled workers, and last year, as many as 600,000 jobs went unfilled, according to a report from Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute.
This mismatch embodies the best and worst of American culture. On the one hand, American manufacturers have bested their international competition, becoming even more efficient after their recent struggles. On the other, there’s been a cultural shift that denigrates the value of manufacturing work, instead pushing young people into ever more impractical fields of study.
The manufacturing sector’s triumph is pretty remarkable. The U.S. is the world’s largest manufacturer, contributing 18.2 percent of the total value added in worldwide production. (China, despite its abundance of cheap labor, comes in second at 17.6 percent.) Though other sectors are panicking about a fiscal cliff and putting expansion on hold, American manufacturing is plowing ahead. Ninety percent of manufacturers told ThomasNet they’re optimistic about the future, and 75 percent planned to expand their operations this year.
The manufacturing sector is also almost uniquely good to its employees. “No longer dirty, dark, or dangerous” has become an industry catchphrase. Careers in manufacturing are not, contrary to popular belief, merely monotonous assembly-line work; today, workers have to be good at problem solving, abstract thinking, and technology. And the pay is good. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that a manufacturing worker makes an average of $23.97 on hour as of October 2012. Manufacturing jobs are also more likely to come with good benefits than jobs in other industries, the Brookings Institute has reported. Furthermore, the manufacturing sector offers high-pay positions for people with low educational attainment; one manufacturing firm told National Review Online that it would pay a $54,000 starting salary to a high-school graduate who could competently repair and maintain machinery.
These job perks are partly caused by demand. Older manufacturing workers are retiring fast, and the work has become more high-tech, says Thomas Holdsworth, a spokesman for SkillsUSA, an organization that provides training for high school and college students. SkillsUSA works closely with the manufacturing sector, connecting it with prospective workers.
“We hear about skill shortage and skill gap,” Holdsworth explained. “Manufacturers say . . . ‘We have a shortage of workers, a shortage of people coming into our profession.’”
The skilled-worker shortage is an education problem. High schools have cut their shop classes, and students are pushed to attain at least a four-year college degree, no matter the major, says Linda Rigano, spokesperson for ThomasNet.
In high schools, “there’s been such a focus on — and this is going to sound terrible — kids going to school,” she said. “Not every kid is meant to go to college.” Meanwhile, manufacturing companies “are paying six figures. You’ve got all these kids who are coming out of college, and they can’t find a job. It’s heartbreaking.”
Young people are told that a four-year college degree is a minimal requirement for career success, but the numbers simply don’t bear this out.
Michigan State University’s 2012–13 Report on Recruiting Trends found that the labor market for new college graduates grew only 3 percent last year — but demand for graduates with associate’s degrees is up 31 percent. Nevertheless, in the last year on record, the U.S. handed out around 2.5 million bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees — and a mere 849,000 associate’s degrees, according to the Department of Education. And during the recession, students with associate’s degrees in career and technical fields had a higher employment rate than students with four-year academic degrees.
High-schoolers aren’t being taught about how marketable they may be in manufacturing. Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute found last year that “among 18- to 24-year-olds, manufacturing ranks dead last among industries which they would choose to stat their careers.” Likewise, this year, Deloitte reported that only 35 percent of American parents would encourage their kids to consider a manufacturing job.
This means that most college students graduate without the skills they need to find a good job, says Greg Rintala, who heads up sales and education for Snap-on Tool Corporation, which produces hand tools for everything from cars to space stations. Not only do these students lack a vocation; many also can’t write or do basic math.
“Parents are making their kids go to college,” Rintala said. “College doesn’t equip them for anything but a liberal-arts degree and how to be a barista anymore. . . . There’s a lot of people out there with college degrees who just can’t find a job. They just don’t have the skills.”
If there’s been a cultural shift away from manufacturing and toward academic achievement, look to the government, says Lindsey Burke, Will Skillman Fellow in Education at the Heritage Foundation.
“So much of it is the continued push to increase federal subsidies to incentivize students to go get a four-year degree when it might not be the right fit,” she said.
The federal government has made access to student loans easier than ever before. Since 1982, the number of federal education subsidies and Pell grants has increased by 475 percent, Burke said. Programs once targeted at increasing the number of low-income students have been expanded to include many middle-class children. That’s driven up college costs, saddled graduates with high debt, and deflated the value of a four-year degree. Furthermore, many in the manufacturing sector say, it’s made young people turn up their noses at good manufacturing jobs.
Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector is adjusting, trying to come up with private-sector solutions, says Tracy Tenpenney, vice president of sales and marketing at Tailored Label Products, a Wisconsin-based company that manufactures stickers for everything from biomedical supplies to outdoor power equipment.
Tailored Label Products participates in the local Second Chance program, which works with high-school sophomores who have fallen behind track for graduation. Tailored Label Products holds classes for these students on its premises and sponsors some of them. The kids spend two hours in formal classes, then spend six hours working with a local manufacturer and learning the trade. Many Second Chance students end up graduating on time after all, leaving not only with a diploma but also with marketable skills — and sometimes a job. This year, Tailored Label Products is funding a college scholarship for a Second Chance alumnus to attend a local trade school.
“I think people are assuming kids aren’t attracted to manufacturing,” Tenpenney said. “I firmly believe that kids are attracted to being employed coming out.”
— Jillian Kay Melchior is a Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow for the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.
Feminism has also had its effects. Women really don’t want to or can’t do the work and the young men are no longer interested or are not prepared. I’m forwarding this to a friend who is a high school principal. Lib through and through.
238,000? Romney mentioned 23,000,000. Your story is good. About everything you buy is made somewhere else and these jobs don't need high skill mechanics to be contracted.
thanks for the reply, hope you find someone. Back in my NASA days I designed some fairly large complicated systems. I mostly worked on the back end (servers) developing the API for the front end guys, since I hated writing User Interface code (BORING).
I see Dirty Jobs has been canceled.
This is EXACTLY what Microsoft used as justification to vastly increase the H1B Visa program to give American Jobs to people who could barely speak english and were half-assed programmers, but DID work for next to nothing.
And when they got their green cards, they demanded better wages, the companies started sending jobs overseas to people who could hardly speak english, were half-assed programmers, but DID work for next to nothing.
Just an excuse folks. SSDD.
Godspeed
you forgot to factor in work ethic and character. There are a lot of people who would rather take lower income and not have to get up early and put in a full days work. Being grown-up is a thing of the past.
There is no way we will drop reason #1 because our manufacturing process uses complex, expensive high speed machinery which is dangerous if operated by people who are not alert. We also have no control over reason #2.
I don't understand, the last full generation of public high school graduates have been fully trained in filling out welfare applications.
Stupid move, indeed. I thought the shop classes I took in Junior High were ridiculous, for the most part, but still learned a few things. So I skipped the high school offerings, but did take a college course or two. I was also fortunate to have a father who taught me how to build things in the garage. I still have a wicked looking knife he helped me build from an 18" file rasp he bought at a garage sale for 25 cents.
That’s true. The manufacturers need to provide OJT and apprentice programs if they want employees that can produce, otherwise we’ll get more foreign workers or the govt will have to bail them out.
The average pay varies widely depending on where you are geographically and union vs. non-union shops. It is NOT an avg. of $25.00/hour, but it is still much better than many other industries.
What honestly ticks me off is seeing true ASSEMBLY line workers that make as much or MORE than these skilled machinists. Why spend those years in school working your butt off when you can make $30.00/hour riveting in a bolt in a car in an assembly line?
More manufacturers need to offer apprenticeships as they do through the Tooling and Manufacturing Association (TMA) in Chicago. That was a formula that worked really well. Of course, if you have no metalworking classes, then finding those who would be a good fit for the programs would be rather difficult.
YES - Apprenticeship programs (OJT and paid schooling), are the BEST (perhaps ONLY) way to get TRULY qualified actual MACHINISTS (not ‘machine operators’, but the ones that can program, set-up AND run the machines, hit precision tolerances, and deal with whatever engineering problems come up. (Be glad my husband isn’t here to give input on some of the engineers that come into the trade who also have no real-world application experience. LOL)
So many ‘kids’ coming into the field today have no clue about real-world application of theory they learned in school. They may have the “book skills”, but book skills are one thing - turning that around to actually applying those skills and being competent is a whole ‘nother ball of wax.
[If my DH was home right now, I’m sure he’d have a lot more to input here...]
Also, I don’t know why this whole thread turned into a thread about IT and Programming jobs - that is decidedly NOT what this article was about. Learning a programming language (which I’ve done on my own myself) is COMPLETELY and absolutely different than learning to be a good, skilled machinist (how many can teach themselves Trig, for example). It takes a different skill set than the ones they are talking about with these jobs.
What happened before you had drug tests?
That just seems so… odd.
Personally, I’d gladly take a decent manufacturing job to have a more steady paycheck week to week, plus I like having hands-on work to balance out intellectualizing and computer stuff. But it seems all ones available around here are wanting X years of experience just to get your foot in the door.
The navy used to be real good at training and OJT for machinists and such, but a lot of the SeaBee rates have been dropped.
Having worked a decade and a half in Japan, I can vouch that it is true.
Drug abuse is not unknown in Japan but neither is it considered so normal that it would qualify you to hold the highest elective office in the country.
“1. People can’t pass drug tests.”
And it’s okay to have someone who drinks and uses Xanax, Zoloft, Hydrocodone and/or Oxycontin on a daily basis run that kind of machinery?
Maybe only those candidates with 5+ years experience in drug-taking should be considered. /s
He told me that the equipment used in coal mining is totally different that what was used here. He had gotten hired simply because he had a demonstrated work ethic and the company was willing to train from near zero experience/knowledge base.
That's just the way it used to be in an America not so long ago.
The point is, that before there were drug tests, there were employees that used drugs and no one ever knew about it. It seems that if drug testing was dropped, then, as you said, there would be more employees available. It shouldn’t be a reason for not hiring someone. The lower-level managers and supervisors would actually have to judge people on their performance and attendance.
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