Bloomberg: Caterpillar’s Worker Hunt Means Welders Top Banking Pay
... Companies such as Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) are looking for workers like Brennan. Even with trades offering competitive pay, skilled factory vacancies may soar fivefold to 3 million by 2015 amid a U.S. industry rebound and baby boomer retirements, according to the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. That shortfall threatens to jeopardize both the U.S. recovery and corporate growth plans.
The manufacturing mismatch is part of a broader skills gap in an economy that has more than 3 million jobs open, even with an unemployment rate that ran at 8 percent or more for 43 straight months until the decline in September to 7.8 percent.
Economics and history are combining to drive the skilled-worker shortage. High-school graduates are opting in increasing numbers for four-year schools that can lead to jobs with higher pay and more prestige, and shying away from manufacturing after it shed jobs for more than a decade....
... Schools that provide training for trades and fields such as nursing aren’t producing students in great-enough numbers. Enrollment in two-year colleges that award degrees totaled 7.68 million in 2010, 18 percent more than in 2005. In the same period, four-year university enrollment climbed 21 percent to 13.3 million, according to the U.S. Education Department. ...
... The average annual salary in the field [welding] is $47,900, more than a bank teller supervisor, according to jobs website CareerBuilder. Welders with their own equipment can make $70 an hour, Roy said. Billing 40 weekly hours at that rate and working 50 weeks a year would produce gross pay of $140,000. ...
... Government figures understate the factory shortage, according to a September 2011 report by Deloitte LLP for the National Association of Manufacturers trade group. The report, based on a survey of 1,123 executives, estimated that there were 600,000 unfilled U.S. jobs in manufacturing.
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers used that data as the basis for its projection of 3 million manufacturing vacancies in three years. ...
... “We’re at the edge of a significant problem turning into a critical problem,” Giffi said. “The only reason it’s staying out of critical is because growth is stalled.”
Industrial companies in search of skilled workers cite a common refrain: reluctance by parents and teachers to steer young people to factory jobs. ...
... The Irving, Texas-based company [Fluor Corp] is visiting high schools and recruiting military veterans to hire about 8,000 skilled workers, he said. ...
And I can't help but wonder how many twentysomethings there are out there with a mountain load of debt for a college education they will not use, who would have been better served with a trade education.
I often see students in my classes who struggle with a liberal arts education and who are not really academically minded. They might say something like "why can't I just start doing stuff, why do I have to take so many classes". They struggle academically because they lose motivation. In their mind they are there to get a job, not an education. It seems to me that many of these students would do well in trade schools.
Posted by: JHM | Oct 16, 2012 at 09:58 AM
I hear ya. The number of students have been trapped in this "college degree solves everything" is really tragic. Too many are saddled with needless debt and wasted years.
And yet I think about a friend who is almost 15 years younger than I am. We used to eat lunch weekly. He was married with four boys and had a high school education. He grew up in poverty. No one in his family had anything beyond high school. No one had ever remotely suggested he try higher education.
As I talked with him, it was so clear to me that he had a very sharp mind and a highly inquisitive spirit. I prodded him for almost two years to just try a college class and see what he thought. He finally tried a class. Today he has a college degree and a M.Div.
I think the real issue is that we haven't developed good social structures that help people discern vocation.
Posted by: Michael W. Kruse | Oct 16, 2012 at 10:54 AM