The Great American Mismatch. Plenty of Manufacturing jobs, too few people with the necessary skills

National Review ^ | 11/26/2012 | Jillian Kay Melchior

[huldah1776]

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.

[TexasTransplant]

Paging Mike Rowe

http://www.mikeroweworks.com/

TT

[ex-snook]

"In September, 238,000 American jobs went unfilled, "

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.

[jpsb]

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).

[cripplecreek]

I see Dirty Jobs has been canceled.

[HeartlandOfAmerica]

In September, 238,000 American jobs went unfilled, despite employers’ best efforts.

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

[all the best]

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.

[Vigilanteman]

We're a manufacturing company which has trouble filling positions for two main reasons:

1. People can't pass drug tests.
   
2. People who turn down job offers because they still have a long way to go on their 99 weeks of unemployment.

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.

[Navy Patriot]

Plenty of Manufacturing jobs, too few people with the necessary skills

I don't understand, the last full generation of public high school graduates have been fully trained in filling out welfare applications.

[Vigilanteman]

I have said for years that dropping the shop classes from high school would have an impact.

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.

[stuartcr]

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.

[LibertyRocks]

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.

[LibertyRocks]

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.

[stuartcr]

What happened before you had drug tests?

[Utmost Certainty]

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.

[stuartcr]

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.

[Vigilanteman]

Our company is fairly new in the United States, mid 1990's. We've always had drug tests. I'm told the home office in Japan does not require drug tests because drug abuse is not a problem there.

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.

[equaviator]

“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

[Vigilanteman]

Companies are at least partially to blame for the mismatch. We had a retirement party recently for an old timer who came here from the coal mining industry back in the 1990's. I asked him if he initially got hired based on experience.

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.

[stuartcr]

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.