The Invisible Hand Is NOT Training Enough Skilled Machinists.

(And by the way, neither are we.)

Estimates of as many as 600,000 unfilled skilled manufacturing jobs despite  years of unemployment over 8% just don’t compute. As a free market guy, I continue to be frustrated waiting for Adam Smith’s Invisble Hand to bring the trained workers our industry needs.

Have we done enough to pursue our own interest, so that society too can benefit?

Why isn’t the Invisible Hand working?

  • Has it been handcuffed by school bureaucrats who insist that college is for everyone? 
  • And parents who fail to critically think about the ROI and Debt obligations that a college degree means today?
  • Has the invisible hand been amputated by school board  and advisory council members who think that the trades is just a necessary evil for someone else’s troublemaker of a kid?
  • Do we have a need for public private partnerships like Right Skills Now to elevate the need for skilled tradesmen and to show advanced manufacturing as a viable, well paying career? Why is the US only in the 17th in Science or 25th in Math achievement worldwide?
  • Or have we as shop owners and machinists been missing  in guiding that invisible hand by concentrating on everything else except skilled workforce development?

What are you doing to develop the skilled workforce that you need?

Or are you waiting, like most shop owners over the last decade or so have waited, for someone else to train your crew?

Invisible Hand Graphic courtesy Micro Loan  Bank Kiva

A Few Good Workers originally published in Modern Applications News May 1999.