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Robot growing pains: Two U.S. factories show tensions of going digital
President Donald Trump has put bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States at the center of his economic and trade agenda. But when jobs actually come - as they have here in southern Indiana - many factory workers are not prepared for them, and employers are having trouble hiring people with the needed skills.
U.S. manufacturing job openings stand near a 15 year high and factories are hiring workers at the fastest clip since 2014, with many employers saying the hardest-to-fill jobs are those that involve technical skills that command top pay.
In 2000, over half of U.S. manufacturing workers had only high school degrees or less, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today, 57 percent of manufacturing workers have technical school training, some college or full college degrees, and nearly a third of workers have bachelors or advanced degrees, up from 22 percent in 2000.
Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the digitalization sweeping the economy is forcing employers to hunt for a different mix of workers - and pay more in some cases for workers with technical skills. A new study by Muro found those with the highest digital skills saw average wage growth of 2 percent a year since 2010, while wages for those with medium skills grew by 1.4 percent and those at the bottom by 1.6 percent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 28 2017, @03:38PM
So then yes, as a business insider that has heard this argument before across many industries, I can tell you that those two jobs have skills in high demand, and for some reason they are unable to fill them.
The corporate executive advice consultant will use this information and provide a viable solution to increase shareholder value: Outsource or offshore because there just isn't enough skilled labor here to meet the demand, as you so eloquently explained.
In case you have a different view than the upper brass, allow me to explain: most of your detail is just tiny violins or insignificant noise to the executive staff, and they really don't care too much about the people not buying their products... I mean most of those people are unemployed anyway, can't even hold a job, certainly not at their business.
California is too expensive to pay living wages for people worried about that sort of thing. They likely don't belong in the community. Once the IT guys figure out all the automation stuff, we'll get rid of them too so the no-skilled open stack script guys can just click next to continue to push updates to the machines. Those guys don't even have to be in the country and probably it'd be better to have them closer to the manufacturing base. That way profits can be increased by eliminating the California IT staff once they've done their job. I think they just copy off google anyway and anyone can do that.
Retain a few with severance denial threats so that way a couple smart offshores can pick up on what the unskilled ones can't be trusted to do, but otherwise this will help clean up the riffraff loitering about the community and increasing drive times. Tell them they are lucky to have a job since so many co-workers have had to go; it'll increase loyalty due to the trust imparted upon them. Words matter, you know.
If we rightsource enough jobs then even if we don't make the revenue targets, we still can vote ourselves a raise at the next board room meeting since its clear our leadership is still required to stay the course.
We can also eliminate a lot of the homeless problem and of people loitering about hoping to get a job--if there aren't any jobs and we are clear that there won't be, we can get the cops to push them into some other community because there'd be no reason to be here. I mean really they are so dreadful. After those plastic bags were banned they started to defecate in the streets! I mean why would we allow public restrooms if they 'rest' in public anyway? We tried to bring a good image to the community by banning trash and they ended up becoming it. What good is a gated community if we have to remain trapped inside with them?