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, @03:48PM (1 child)
hey it's almost like I worked for your place. my boss also was into red shirts. wanted everyone to syncronize their outfits so that he could stand out as the boss.
but that happened because a suborinate wore something nice one day and acted educated and polite...and the potential customer thought the wrong person was in charge.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday December 28 2017, @04:43PM
Ah yes. Egos. I was giving a presentation the other day at the companies weekly manager meeting when the sales manager, yup, the fucking sales manager, interrupted me to try and argue technical semantics of which he has no authority on. He was feeling dumb and had to put an end to it. Can't have one of the plebs upstage me. Thankfully that was yet another strike against his two-faced entitled "I'm the owners cousin with the same prestigious family surname" bullshit that the new director of operations is mounting against that prick.