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.
Our oldest son sees recruiters every week at his high school. They know him by name before he meets them. He is one of a handful of males who have spent their high school years learning machining skills. His main focus has always been Auto. But his sophomore year, we pushed him to take Metals classes. He did that for a year and a half along with his auto classes. Then he signed up for Welding, but I think he dropped the class because he already knew everything that would be covered. His auto teachers are wonderful and have exposed him and a few dedicated others to so many things. They have defense contractors among others courting them because they say they cannot find anyone with their skills even among the community college students. They are offering to send them to school to round out any holes in their skill sets.
If you had a grown child still dependent on you long after he/she reached adulthood, you’d have to think that there was something seriously wrong with him/her.
You’d think they had a problem with their IQ or some other social or psychological deficiency that kept them from being gainfully employed .. or even WANTING to be employed!
Dependence over time is an absolutely unwholesome way to live....yet it is rationalized and even encouraged for whole swaths of American people!!
WHY? I’d be ashamed if it was MY CHILD, and yet I am supposed to be OK with it, if it’s an ever increasing crowd of total strangers who demand more all the time and who have NO idea of EVER being self sufficient!
I am also supposed to sit still for being called ugly names if I say that it’s an unwholesome and demeaning way for adults to live!!??
“Our supervisors are also trained to use ‘reasonable suspicion’ criteria if they suspect someone is on something or drunk while they’re working.”
I assume that means there must be somebody who is trained to use ‘reasonable suspicion’ criteria if they suspect supervisors and/or higher ranks are on something or drunk while they’re working. However, it would not surprise me if my assumption is incorrect.
Dialogue to “Dummy Up”
In a live performance by
Frank Zappa & The Mothers
Whoa!
Somethin’ I never seen before
Been walkin’ down the street every day
Nobody like you ever passed my way
Maybe it must be too much sun
Couldn’t be my hat, must be too much...
Wait a minute! is that you?
What’s that? ...what, what’s that? ...
What, what’s that? ...what? ...
Dummy up
What is that? ...
I know what that is, I know what that is...
I bet you that’s a restaurant menu...
Let me see!...let me see!
Not only do you get the Desenex burger
What?
Not only...the Desenex burger
Well you are in for a real treat, Jim
Wait a minute...I think I like that dance better than...
What are you talkin’ about, creep?
What I’m talkin’ about is you’ve been in this killer fog down here too long
What?
You need somethin’ to get up and go to school with
Wait a minute, you’re not talkin’ to an old fool now,
You know I wasn’t born yesterday!
Heh heh heh!
Wait a minute...
I like that little dance you were doin’ there...
(Jeff Simmons tries to corrupt Napoleon Murphy Brock by showing him a lewd dance and suggesting that he smoke a high-school diploma...)
Hey, wait a minute!
Hey this, this stuff...
I never seen one of these before...that’s not a menu...
This stuff is expensive
What is that?
You shoot it, you’ll conserve all winter.
I do what?
It lasts longer
(not only do you get the Desenex burger)
Now come on, try it.
No, no.
It’s really good.
No. smoke that?!
Have I ever lied to you?
Have I ever seen you before?
I don’t, I don’t even know you!
Look...
I don’t even know what that is!
And you’re drivin’ me to smoke it?!...
Just before, we smoked the tapes that you made.
Smoked the tapes?
Smoked the tapes of your group.
I think I’m with the damned.
You can really get off.
Let’s try a joint of this.
A what?
A joint.
You mean this kinda joint?
No man!
Where you been in livin’, Reseda?
No, San Jose!...
(The evil dope pusher is cutting up a white gym sock, formerly owned by Carl Zappa and still damp. the shredded sock will be placed inside of a high-school diploma and ignited with a sulphur-preparation...his first taste of big city life!)...
That’s okay, wait...
Hey! the roach of this is really gonna be good, so I’ll...
Have mercy!
What do you do with that thing?
What do you do with that thing? yeah!
Wait a minute!
Wait a minute!
Wait a minute!
What do you do with that thing?
I wanna know!
Wait a minute!
(Now the next step of this operation: the evil corrupter of youth is going to take him from step one, which is a mere high-school diploma stuffed with a gym sock, to step two, which is a college degree stuffed with absolutely nothing at all. Smoke that and it’ll really get you out there)
I still don’t feel as good as I felt this mornin’...yeah yeah...
(you’ll grow out of it...)
Dummy up!
I heard it again, somebody said...
You see this?
Wait a minute!...
College!
College!
That’s college-rhythm.
You mean if I smoke that, it’s the same as this,
As if I was at college?
Roll it on up!
Roll it on up!
Roll it on up!
Give me that!...
No no, the college degree is stuffed with absolutely nothing at all...
You get, you get NOTHING with your college-degree.
But that’s what I want!
I forgot, I’m sorry...
Well, if you get nothin’, well that’s what I want.
(a true zen saying: nothing is what I want. the results of a higher education...)
This is why I have put my oldest through College for Computer Science. He landed a job immediately. My 2nd child is in his second year for a double major including computer science.
I however am working at Target for the simple reason that manufacturing in this area will only give you a contract for a limited amount of time. I would rather work then hope for the next job.
Some day I will finish my college. Have 3 kids, so still have a 3rd to go through the system. Fun times!
This is why the cartels are allowed to run wild. Drugs are part of the weakening process.
Work is substituted by Government borrowing and taxation pays for the rest.
No family structure on purpose, Cloward and Piven.
>>Don’t always assume it is the workers who are the ones causing the problems - sometimes people hire supervisors and managers who haven’t a clue, and think that with some business degree they can walk into a shop and do a good job.
Sometimes the attitude of upper management and supervisors can have a lot to do with the attitude of your workers, and the quality of work they do for you. The way it sounds like some of you view these people is kind of disturbing, honestly.<<
I agree 100%, and we’ve got our share of those issues too.
Absolutely, 100% correct! When money isn’t earned, it has no value.
In the state I used to live in, there was a slum area. The powers that be got it in their heads to renovate the whole neighborhood. Millions of dollars later, it looked pretty decent. Within two years, it was a cesspool again. The ones taking the dole have no incentive to maintain property, clean up after themselves, or secure their neighborhood - because it’s all “free” to them.
I guess we’ll revert to the feral state ...living in caves and mauling one another like tribal animals for the basic necessities of life.
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