SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
When states suffer a widespread loss of jobs, the damage extends to the next generation, where college attendance drops among the poorest students, says new research from Duke University. As a result, states marked by shuttered factories or dormant mines also show a widening gap in college attendance between rich and poor, the authors write.
In states that suffered a 7 percent job loss, college attendance by the poorest youth subsequently dropped by 20 percent, even when financial aid increased. The pattern also persisted across a wide range of states, despite variations in public college tuition rates.
Source: Duke University
Excellent. Maybe now we can get over this idea that our precious little progeny are too good for blue collar work and fill some of the six million jobs that nobody can be found to do.
[Editor's note: On my checking of the '6 million jobs' statement, I came across this article from September last year.]
[J]ob openings at 5.9 million in July set a new all-time record. Yet despite all the anxiety we hear about disappearing factory jobs, the number of unfilled manufacturing jobs in July was at the highest level in recent years. So why are they still open?
Factory work has evolved over the past 15 years or so as companies have invested in advanced machinery requiring new skill sets. Many workers who were laid off in recent decades – as technology, globalization and recession wiped out lower-skilled jobs – don't have the skills to do today's jobs.
[...] Gary Miller [...] started at Ohio-based Kyocera Precision Tools Inc. in 1989, it employed 550 production workers. Since then it has shed half of its workers; yet it now produces twice as much [...] Mr. Miller, who is now the company's director of training, struggles to find technicians with the electrical and mechanical skills needed to operate and maintain the complex machines. One electrical maintenance job went unfilled for over a year as he searched for someone with an associate's or bachelor's diploma in manufacturing engineering.
[...] The study found it takes an average of 94 days to recruit for highly-skilled roles such as scientist or engineer, and 70 days for skilled production workers.
Source: Value Walk
Additionally, there are apparently plenty of jobs in food service. Starting in March of 2010 and continuing through April of 2017, there have been 86 consecutive month of payroll gains for America's waiters and bartenders. Since 2014, 800,000 "food service and drinking places" jobs have been created, over the same period the number of manufacturing jobs created has been just 105,000.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday June 18 2017, @12:04AM (2 children)
Wasn't talking machine shops. They can do whatever they like and would have work for apprentices. Was talking generic industrial situations where you have maybe two machinists on site and zero need for an apprentice.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday June 18 2017, @03:21AM (1 child)
So what are your (suddenly much more narrowly defined) companies doing now, assuming your labor shortage is actually at the crisis level you suggest?
Machinists generally aren't things that you can just "not have" in large production companies. If you need a machinist to make parts, those parts have to be made. If they aren't, production generally goes way down. It's not like just having a single worker missing from a manufacturing scenario where you just reduce the output by the amount of the individual worker. If you're missing a machinist, parts don't get made, machines stop running, eventually large segments of the company may shut down.
So what are your companies doing? It seems there are several options -- they could be paying overtime to existing workers. But that doesn't really make sense for your scenario of 1-2 machinists per company. You can't magically get one person to do the work of 2, and having 2 people do the work of 3 for any length of time is going to be both stressful and costly... and cost a lot more than just raising your offering wages enough to attract another machinist. Well, unless you're abusing your workers with their overtime too, I guess.
So maybe they're sending the work out to a 3rd-party shop. Which means a machinist is still getting paid to do the work. Maybe it's inefficient, but the company is clearly willing to live with the inefficiency rather than raising wages to attract an in-house machinist. But in this case, "shortage" isn't exactly the right word, because the work is already being done by machinists, so more work wouldn't magically appear if someone filled the in-house position... rather, the 3rd-party shop would lose business too.
But let's say that the shortage is real and the company REALLY wants a machinist in-house. But they're unwilling to pay a premium wage to recruit one. So it seems to me one of the few remaining options is to do some sort of trainee thing, where you find some skilled, intelligent person in the company (or from outside, though you may need to fire your HR person to allow a person without the requisite buzzwords in the door) you're willing to promote (this used to happen in companies a lot), and offer to pay for night school or whatever to get the requisite training. You have them sign a contract (this is common today for employers providing education) where they have to pay you back for training costs if they leave within X amount of time. Ultimately, the company ends up with a trained employee but perhaps saves on premium salary long-term.
If the shortage of machinists is as dire as you make it out to be, surely companies WOULD be trying an option like this. Even a shop with only a couple machinists can take on an apprentice with the thought that they'll need another trained one in years to come. It's a good investment for any company that is planning long-term. Alas, that's the real issue here, isn't it? Companies are unwilling to invest in workers because it requires long-term planning.
Browse around online a bit and read machinists forums, and see how much actual folks in the trade think about this "shortage." It's about the same rhetoric you get here when Silicon Valley declares a STEM/programmer shortage. You want more workers? Pay more. You still can't find them for what you're willing to pay? Train them or pay to train them. Fact is that overall college still promises higher incomes and higher employment to most people -- when I see companies offering six-figure salaries for a machinist, I'll know your shortage is real and by that point kids WILL be making choices to do that over college. As it is, recent salary surveys tell me that the median salary for machinists is still only around $40000. The median STARTING salary for a college grad is higher than that (including all majors). For technical majors that good potential machinists might be attracted to, the differential for a college degree salary is a lot higher.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday June 18 2017, @03:50AM
Yeah, that's not how it works. If you don't have enough work to keep the person in a position busy for forty hours a week, you eliminate the position. Apprenticeship is not worth the resulting master given that they're likely to leave for another company that chose to raise their salary rather than train apprentices as soon as their apprenticeship is up.
It's likely one of those Tragedy's but it's late and I can't think of which.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.