The 2011 Skills Gap Survey by the Manufacturing Institute shows that about 600,000 manufacturing jobs are unfilled nationally in US because employers can't find qualified workers. There's a need for a new generation of welders, pipe-fitters, electricians, carpenters, machinists and other skilled tradesmen, high schools should be helping with this. WSJ writes that there may be a feature where welders could make 150,000 USD[Log-in Required]. Employers in US are so yearning to motivate young people that many are willing to pay to train and recruit future laborers. Ariel Corp recently announced that the manufacturer of gas compressors is donating 1,000,000 USD for updating the Knox County Career Centers computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) equipment, so students can train on the same equipment used in Ariel's operations. There seems to be a trend of college exam inflation.
(Score: 5, Funny) by dublet on Friday April 25 2014, @04:05PM
wages for those roles are rising in order to attract more people? Right?
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 5, Informative) by rancid on Friday April 25 2014, @04:23PM
Hello nail, meet hammer.
These manufacturing companies have plenty of people willing to work for them. The companies simply aren't willing to train people and pay a decent wage. We have a local private jet manufacturer in town. They always claim to need skilled people. Starting wage for building half million dollar jets? $10.40 an hour. And you're not even going to get a call back without a perfect work history, excellent references, and aircraft experience. The HR drone told me they get over five hundred applications for entry level jobs each month but they're always claiming, "Oh we really need people!"
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday April 25 2014, @05:02PM
This may not simply be a numbers game. Specific roles need specific experience regardless of pay grade. I would hope that the aerospace industry has some fairly stringent demands for workers in the realms of both experience and aircraft construction-related certifications (not that companies hiring will help you get those).
A few years ago I got a job as IT manager at a private school suspiciously easily, height of the recession and all. After talking to a couple of the other staff it turned out I was the only person interviewed. I then found a folder full of the other applicant's CVs, carelessly left in the IT cupboard, and not one of them had any Mac experience at all - that was the clincher. I was, quite literally, the only man for the job despite a deluge of applicants far more experienced in general/educational IT than myself.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday April 25 2014, @05:28PM
Please tell me how a manufacturing worker can get aircraft experience before being hired to work on aircraft?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday April 25 2014, @05:35PM
You did read my whole comment, right? Including the bit in the brackets?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Friday April 25 2014, @05:54PM
My comment is in regards to your hoping for stringent requirements. Those requirements are a big part of the problem. It's like trying to hire a database programmer but only accepting people with experience working on your own database. Speaking as a CNC programmer with about 20 years experience, aircraft parts are just like any other parts. If the part meets the print, it's good, otherwise it's not. If you can make car parts, gun parts, toy parts, or any other parts to print, you can make aircraft parts to print. I think the issue is largely that HR either doesn't understand the job well enough to make good decisions, or is unwilling to take the risk of hiring someone who hasn't done that specific job before.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday April 25 2014, @06:23PM
Ah, I see where you're coming from now.
Where pre-requisites for particular roles apply, you should find training courses or apprenticeships for those roles. At least, if they have a correctly functioning employment ecosystem you should. A lot of folks in western society are waking up to the fact that they failed to encourage their youth to pursue the broad spectrum of professions that society actually needs to continue functioning. Our domestic education preferences have become "top-heavy", preferring degrees over anything else, while relying on immigration for skilled labour from countries that aren't so snobbish or unrealistic about their children's future.
The result is obvious all around us - demand for skilled labour goes unfilled at any salary while college graduates fight for the right to flip burgers.
(Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Friday April 25 2014, @09:28PM
The bit that said where you *wouldn't* get that experience, but didn't actually mention how to break the recursion?
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday April 25 2014, @06:39PM
Not only that, but there's tons of lying going on. This story was discussed on the Other Site yesterday, and one thing that a bunch of people with lots of knowledge about the welding industry chimed in and said was that they $150k welding job figure is total bullshit. Most welders make about $30k, the only ones who make big bucks are self-employed and extreme experts able to do welding jobs that very few people can, for very specialized applications, and these people probably own $50k in welding equipment. You're not going to get anywhere near that kind of money as an employee somewhere.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DECbot on Friday April 25 2014, @09:23PM
I can comment on this as I do work in the welding industry. Your regular old line welders that only know how to weld on one part are $30k a year job. Something like $10-25 an hour depending on the area's cost of living, the welder's skill and the employer's willingness to pay its employees. A weld engineer can get a $70-90k a year with a few years experience out of school (4 year BS in welding). You're veteran welders that get flown across the world for making specialty welds (pipe line, nuclear, underwater, etc) can command what they want for the job (or what the union pays), especially if it is dangerous or if it is an emergency repair.
You don't see too often where an employer will train a welder to make welds with different fillers or gasses, or even weld different materials or joints other than the ones required to finish the part. The welder is given a torch, told to use this wire, this gas, this voltage, this amperage, and this wire feed speed on just those joints. Deviating on any of those creates scrap. If you make too much scrap, you're fired.
**(This is in regards to line welders, shipyards, cladding, and manufacturing positions of that nature. Job shop welders and TIG welders are a different story.)
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 1) by albert on Saturday April 26 2014, @01:46AM
So if we combine "(pipe line, nuclear, underwater, etc)" with "emergency repair", probably "dangerous" gets thrown in as a bonus and the pay is great. For example, a few days after that tsunami you could have been welding a pipe in Fukushima's flooded basement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 25 2014, @04:31PM
Don't forget investment in training too!
Not sure 600,000 is that many though really, might be that many unemployed in and around Detroit.
Of course a lot of those highly skilled workers that were pushed into unemployment by shipping heavy industry overseas in/around the 80s have retired or died by now. The ones still around would likely be happy to get away from their not much better then minimum wage jobs or off the streets. Are there still many square miles of vacant factories in the North East? Wouldn't doubt those with college degrees even, would like to get out of McDonald's, WalMart, etc jobs even if it meant taking training to use their math skills etc as a machinist or whatever.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 25 2014, @04:37PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday April 25 2014, @05:09PM
The problem with university students is that they expect to get a job because they have a degree. They follow the old prescribed route through university without actually looking at the job market. My own children will not be getting university tuition paid for, I'll be helping them find an apprenticeship in whatever it is they want to do. They'll have an far easier time with some entry-level qualifications AND experience to back them up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 25 2014, @04:06PM
600,000? I guess they'll have to import cheaper labor on visas, or send work overseas and avoid the "outsourcing tax" since they've "proven" there's simply not enough skilled labor here. Of course they could also raise salaries and benefits to reasonable levels to attract some of those sufficiently skilled, domestic laborers....nahhh....
Oh, first post!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 25 2014, @04:08PM
> Oh, first post!
My claim to fame is a LIEEE!!!! A LIIEE!!!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 25 2014, @04:49PM
Therein lies the problem. The skilled, domestic labor pool is shrinking. More and more kids are going to college after a degree that will do very little for them instead of gaining valuable job skills that pretty much guarantee them work for the rest of their lives.
Everyone wants to shit in a working toilet, everyone wants their lights to come on when they flip a switch, everyone wants their heater to heat and their AC to cool, and there will always be small bits of metal that need a human to turn them into one large bit of metal. This will never change and, barring everyone suddenly deciding to listen to me for a change, they will always be able to demand a good wage.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Friday April 25 2014, @05:17PM
You know, one thing that would help matters would be for national policy to encourage apprenticeship and training in skilled trades as much as it encourages college.
We're in a situation where the role of universities has moved, de facto, from education to occupational training. They are mostly ill suited to that role. People who want to get a job should have the option to get specific training for that job, at lower cost.
The beauty is that a plumber or medical technician who does that is not even missing out on a rich intellectual life. Today we have MOOCs and stimulating online communities like Soylent that are probably better for your brain than some universities. So if you want an education in the original sense of the word, all you need is intellectual curiosity and an Internet connection.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 25 2014, @05:30PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 26 2014, @02:42AM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 25 2014, @08:14PM
national policy to encourage apprenticeship and training
As always with this hand-waving from the presstitutes, there is NOT an actual shortage.
If you open up your phone book, you'll find plenty of people listed there whom you can PAY to get your task done.
There are plenty of skilled people who have opened their own companies and who are available as subcontractors to the corporations with the tasks to do.
A group of skilled people, who individually don't have everything necessary (seed money, complete range of experiences), can become their own bosses by forming A COOPERATIVE (a collective).
Heh. There's me mentioning Marxism as the solution to yet another problem.
As always, the only "shortage" is the number of skilled people willing to work for the compensation being offered.
As has been said in this thread numerous times (and all the other times this topic has arisen), when there is an ACTUAL shortage of a commodity, the price of that commodity goes up.
The dogs and bones analogy [alternet.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Friday April 25 2014, @08:26PM
All I was suggesting is that in some cases, going to school for HVAC repair might offer better return-on-investment than a bachelor's degree, so it would be better for everyone if the Federal subsidies for "higher education" didn't skew people's choices of education and training.
I don't know even know whether you can get a Federal student loan to go to welding school, but if you can't, it seems kind of elitist that the Feds will happily subsidize a degree in English literature instead.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday April 25 2014, @09:45PM
Government sponsored 4-year indoctrination: Free (or loan subsidized if you cant stretch the grant money)
Private trade school to learn how to make a living: completely out of pocket
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 5, Insightful) by oodaloop on Friday April 25 2014, @04:06PM
Manual labor is a great career choice for other people. Just like mass transit is a great way to commute for other people.
Many Bothans died to bring you this comment.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday April 25 2014, @10:42PM
We can survive without the programmers and accountants.
We can't survive without the farmers and ditchdiggers.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by michealpwalls on Friday April 25 2014, @11:36PM
We can survive without the programmers ...
You take that back!
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday April 25 2014, @11:45PM
Hmm. Well, okay. How are they broiled and basted? ;)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 26 2014, @03:15AM
I'm pretty sure I can both farm and dig ditches (done both before), but I doubt inverse is true of farmers and ditchdiggers
(Score: 5, Informative) by internetguy on Friday April 25 2014, @04:13PM
Welders are NOT making $150,000! According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:
"The lowest 10 percent earned less than $24,720, and the top 10 percent earned more than $56,130. Employment of welders is projected to grow 6 percent from 2012 to 2022, slower than the average for all occupations."
The average salary is between $40,000 and $50,000. Get the facts right!
Sig: I must be new here.
(Score: 4, Funny) by everdred on Friday April 25 2014, @04:18PM
> Welders are NOT making $150,000!
There's a joke in here somewhere that I'm having trouble developing... something about weldfare queens.
Someone help me out.
(Score: 2) by Silentknyght on Friday April 25 2014, @04:31PM
I'm not disagreeing that $150k seems like a stretch; it does seem like a stretch. I'm guessing that TFA (unread; paywalled) is speculating on increased salary due to a shortage of supply. Plus, if you massage the numbers so that they include the monetary value of various other benefits like employer-subsidized health insurance and retirement, the $150k value is even more plausible. Again, plausible, but still seems like a stretch.
(Score: 5, Informative) by metamonkey on Friday April 25 2014, @04:43PM
No, welders can make $150,000...if they're underwater or 1,000 feet off the ground working on a skyscraper, they've got 20 years of experience and their welds must pass x-ray inspection tests. But your average vocational school welding graduate, no, no they're going to be making $30,000/year.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by egcagrac0 on Friday April 25 2014, @05:30PM
Ding!
If you're doing underwater 6g, or a welder at a nuclear plant where you have to recertify for 6g xray daily... yeah, that $150k is a reasonable number.
If you're doing food-grade stainless TIG (say, dairy equipment), it's a bit lower.
If you're tacking sheet metal for appliance skins, it's rather a bit lower.
(Score: 1) by scruffybeard on Friday April 25 2014, @05:11PM
I think there was a typo in the summary, they meant to say there there may be a "future" where welders make $150k. If employment for welders is growing by 6%, and there are less people learning that vocation, then I can very well imagine that top 10-20% of skilled welders getting more money, approaching $150k. Especially for experienced employees who weld under extreme conditions, or to exacting specifications.
(Score: 2) by starcraftsicko on Friday April 25 2014, @04:17PM
There seems to be a trend of college exam inflation.
This post was created with recycled electrons.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by MrGuy on Friday April 25 2014, @04:49PM
Your Mom's a non sequitur.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MrGuy on Friday April 25 2014, @04:38PM
You can make a lot of money right now as a Cobol programmer. There are a LOT of Cobol programs still out there in the wild, and there's fewer and fewer people to maintain them, so companies have to pay premium prices for talented people who know Cobol. You can make more these days knowing Cobol well than knowing Java well.
On the surface, this seems to imply that it's a great idea to become a Cobol programmer.
The problem, however, is that there's no long term potential in the job. Every day the installed base of Cobol gets smaller. Eventually there won't be any left, and the guy with "10 years of Cobol expertise!" is going to have a hard time finding a new job.
The US Manufacturing industry has been shrinking for decades. Sure, there MIGHT be a demand imbalance right now that allows skilled laborers in manufacturing to command a premium price. But personally, I'd like to see a growth trend and future for the industry before I'd recommend anyone grab the short-term cash on the table (especially if they think the gravy train will last forever...)
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Friday April 25 2014, @04:47PM
There's almost nothing that is a guaranteed career anymore. Healthcare. Healthcare, particularly elder care is about it.
Makes me glad I work doing databasery for a hospital.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 2) by emg on Friday April 25 2014, @05:33PM
"There's almost nothing that is a guaranteed career anymore. Healthcare. Healthcare, particularly elder care is about it."
Where do you think the money is going to come from to pay for all that healthcare, when no-one else has a job?
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Friday April 25 2014, @05:38PM
Because old people have all the wealth, and they get sick.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 2) by emg on Friday April 25 2014, @05:49PM
"Because old people have all the wealth, and they get sick."
Uh, no, they don't have 'all that wealth'.
They may own a house, but they can't sell it if no-one has a job allowing them to buy it. They may own stocks and bonds, but they can't sell them if no-one has a job allowing them to buy it.
All the money for that old age healthcare has to come, one way or another, from the younger generation who are lucky to find a job working as coffee flingers.
(Score: 1) by RandomSchmoe on Friday April 25 2014, @05:08PM
Every industry has peaks and valleys, especially as the economy changes over time. US manufacturing has actually been increasing lately in certain segments, like cars. But committing to a skilled career is always a risk in any industry because you simply can't know what the demand will be in 20+ years.
The Best Comments Ever Seen On Slashcode [seenonslash.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by emg on Friday April 25 2014, @05:31PM
"The problem, however, is that there's no long term potential in the job. Every day the installed base of Cobol gets smaller."
I remember a recruiter suggesting I take a COBOL job in the early 90s that would have paid twice what I was making developing in C. But I decided not to because, after all, COBOL wouldn't be around for much longer and I didn't want to be stuck working on a dead language.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday April 25 2014, @08:46PM
I teach Latin, you insensitive clod!
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Friday April 25 2014, @05:44PM
Manufacturing can be done elsewhere and the resultant products transported; construction generally has to be done on-site.
If you need a welder, an electrician, or a plumber to get the pieces together and working on-site, or to repair an existing facility, you're gonna pay.
It may make sense to import labor, but you can probably get a better deal if there's available labor locally.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 25 2014, @08:09PM
No, stop saying that. The demand is for programmers who know CICS, DB2, VSAM, IMS, etc. COBOL is the glue language. Sure, you need to know it, but knowing COBOL and being an experienced IBM stack programmer are two different things...!!! The horrors of CICS are so unimaginable to the uninitiated that the worst programming you've ever thought about pales in comparison. It's awful. Think about a combination of assembly language screen layouts and HTTP-style stateless transactions, and multiply it by 100x. You would need many years to learn CICS well enough to do anything with it, and what companies want are experienced maintenance programmers. I wish I could auto-post this any time someone mentions COBOL programmers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 25 2014, @04:46PM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by kaganar on Friday April 25 2014, @05:05PM
Demand comes before supply, and these days nobody wants to supply "qualified" (work-experienced) workers on their dime. Could we have gotten where we are technologically today if in the previous centuries nobody wanted to train new workers? When did companies start expecting off-the-shelf employees?
This is a first world problem among the corporations -- they want to buy talent at pennies on the dollar of the cost it takes to create it. I can't sustainably buy their products for less than it costs to make them, and they can't sustainably buy skilled employees for less than the cost it takes to make them.
Ultimately, I'll choose made-in-China over your product because it's half the price because you can't find cheap skilled labor.
What's the next step? Tariffs?
(Score: 2) by black6host on Friday April 25 2014, @05:36PM
In previous centuries you worked as an apprentice. For room and board if you were lucky. You worked long hours, did all the crap work and after being in the trade for a considerable time, and assuming you had talent, you could make a living. And not necessarily a good one.
Or, you worked on your family farm and eventually inherited it. Or family business. Same deal though, basically indentured servitude.
Those who were creative and/or artistic would have a benefactor who would support their work.
Things were different back then....
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 25 2014, @05:31PM
Don't like to think too much, it makes me think too much,
It keeps my mind on my mind
Don't wanna see too much, it makes me see to much
Sometimes I'd rather be blind
All the things that they're saying & doing
When they pass me by just fills me up with noise
It overloads me
I wanna disconnect myself
Pull my brain stem out and unplug myself
I want nothing right now, I want to pull it out
Chorus:
Yeah, I want to pull it out, yeah
I wanna break it all down, hey, I wanna pull it out
Yeah, yeah, disconnect myself, disconnect myself
I wanna see it go down, yeah, disconnect myself
A thousand miles an hour going nowhere fast
Clinging to the details of your past
Talking 'bout your damages and your wasting my time
Wanna be the king of pain, stand in line
All the numbers and the colours and the facts
Backed by the rumours and the figures and the stats
I think I'm gonna download my mind
Chorus
Too damn bad if at the end of the day the only thoughts
In your brain are all the things that they say, what a waste
Too damn bad if at the end of the line you got no idea
What's on your own mind, you got no one to blame but yourself
Too much to know, too much to see
It might mean something to you but it's nothing to me
Its just another ad for someone's version of how they think it should be
I wanna disconnect myself, pull my brain stem out, unplug myself
I want nothing right now, I want to pull it out
(Score: 2) by randmcnatt on Friday April 25 2014, @05:32PM
The Wright brothers were not the first to fly: they were the first to land.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Appalbarry on Saturday April 26 2014, @01:07AM
The same discussion has been going on up in Canada, with all of the petro companies crying the blues because (allegedly) there just are no skilled workers available in Canada.
What this really means is that there aren't enough skilled workers that someone else paid to train available to work for less than skilled worker level wages.
Since it is entirely impossible for companies to pay to train workers, or to hire apprentices, the only solution available is to bring in temporary foreign workers. Amazingly it is cheaper to hire someone in China or the Philippines then fly them to Canada to do the work.
Or, I guess more accurately, the kind of people who would leave their families behind and come half way around the planet to work in a coal mine, are also desperate enough to work for significantly less than a native born miner.
This month though both McDonalds and Tim Hortons' Coffee shops got busted for hiring TFW to work in their stores, allegedly because despite 7% unemployment no Canadian workers were available. They got nailed when it was found out that they were specifically reducing the hours of native born Canadian workers and increasing the hours worked by lower paid offshore workers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 26 2014, @09:11AM
Free Market at work, rejoice!
Dude that's communism!