Posted on 06/20/2011 5:19:51 AM PDT by markomalley
A mismatch in the US labour market between the skills of unemployed people and the jobs available is making it hard for some companies to find the right staff despite an unemployment rate of more than 9 percent, one of the country’s largest manufacturing employers has warned.
Eric Spiegel, chief executive in the US for Siemens, the German engineering group, said the problem exposed weaknesses in education and training in the US. Siemens had been forced to use more than 30 recruiters and hire staff from other companies to find the workers it needed for its expansion plans, even amid an unemployment rate of 9.1 percent
“There’s a mismatch between the jobs that are available, at least in our portfolio, and the people that we see out there,” Mr Spiegel told the Financial Times. “There is a shortage (of workers with the right skills.)”
He said Siemens was having to invest in education and training to meet its staffing needs, including apprenticeship programmes of the kind it uses in Germany.
His comments, made before Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, visits a Siemens plant in Ohio on Monday, suggest better education and training could help reduce the persistently high US unemployment rate.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Even then we were way ahead of the Germans.
I’m a software engineer. I’m actually in the process of developing some browser addons for Free Republic. They could hire me, but I’m already employed and too expensive for them.
BS, our highly productive and PROFITABLE manufacturing base was shipped overseas to increase profits a few more pennies on the dollar. We are so screwed now and weak in heavy industries that a major war would cause us to start to hurl nukes almost from the outset because we cannot fight a war of attrition(any more). I can't and will not stand to listen to free traitors blather on on how we deserved what we got, count your blood money in quiet and STFU. The blood of future patriots is on your hands, curse you all.
The Stuxnet worm that infiltrated Iranian nuclear facilities ran on Siemens equipment.
We're still the #1 producer in the world.
Ugh, if you say so.
He’s right. The U.S. workforce is becoming more unskilled, unethical, unmotivated, and ignorant every year.
Your anti capitalist views are unusual for a conservative.
The reason for being in business is to make a profit. The reason for ceasing to manufacture some products is that such operations are no longer profitable or the capital can be put to work more profitably in some other operation.
Blah blah... but not one word about which skills they seek.
You can't train T+D makers that don't have advanced math skills, and even then it takes a long time. You can't run a Mfg plant without someone there that can quickly make parts to repair tooling, and there are damn few of them out there.
What we have today are tool sharpeners and parts changers with Journeymen T+D cards. Most of them couldn't ‘Make’ a die with a gun to their head.
With JIT Mfg of today you can't wait to send everything out to a specialty T+D shop to have parts made, and you can't afford to have spare parts for everything that might break.
We are screwed until that changes.
I know many people that still think that way about Germans and Japanese. It is a generational thing. Give us 10 years and the new generation of Americans will be happy as pigs in a poke to go to Wal-Mart and buy their Al-Quida cars. When people are making and saving money they throw out the window incidental things like long term security of nation and the outmoded concept of patriotism.
If those in USA leadership (both Parties) have no concept of Patriotism, and they don’t because both are beating the drum for for more free trade, how do they expect an example to be set.
They may fool me once on free trade but only once. It has never worked for the nation, although it made individual CEOs and banksters quite wealthy.
The media has purposely dumbed down Americans so that the politicians can have their way with us.
The problem in the USA is that we lost many millions of good paying jobs over 40 years that paid taxes, and replaced them with low paying jobs that pay no or little income taxes, and that is the crux of our indebtedness. If a family loses their income they need to go live in a tent and forget all the luxuries or they will go into debt. Same with a nation.
There was a time when this country abounded with schools offering, mechanical, machining, carpentry, and welding courses,
Budding shade tree and bailing wire mechanics loved working on their jalopies. Dad’s saw to it that boys grew up fixing everything with anything, as a matter of course they repaired appliances, cars, farm tractors and equipment.
Today, most people do not even know where to check the oil, let alone change it.
Today? All of that is gone. They kids don't know the rules of grammar, can't multiply without a calculator, don't know when WWII was fought, and they can't make or fix anything either.
We spend vast amounts on education, and today, nobody don't know nothing.
We have no need for skills; we shipped all our industry overseas, and now we don’t have to work. Big Bro’ O is going to take care of us.....
Apprenticeships are the one thing the Germans do right.
We don’t need no stinkin’ skills; ‘Big Bro O’ is going to take care of us! We shipped all our stinkin’ industry, jobs, and skills overseas years ago, fool.
The manufacturing business may be having a hard time finding skilled workers and product contracts, but the “education” business is booming at all levels and flush with government money and union contracts!
“...it is a Wonder the electric is still on in this place.
It won’t be for long if the Lawyer in Chief and his EPA have anything to say about it.....and they do.”
These people are nothing but rubbish,they do not contribute but destroy.
Internally, they are a mess... They have so much overlap due to a huge bureaucracy it's amazing they churn out anything useful at all.
The charter high schools need to bring these skills back. I remember being in auto class and it was a blast. From there I built many hot rods, with the help of my dad. The competition in those classes was amazing and carried over to jobs I had. It was a way of life for us back then.
Isn't that protectionist Socialism?
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