Lou Dobbs is hosting a program exploring the shortage of skilled workers tonight on Fox News.

Yet our precision machining shops have openings for skilled machinists.

Out of Work” is the name of the show.  Business owners speak about the need for skilled labor and not enough candidates.

Look for “Out of Work”  on Fox News (National) tonight at (9:00 P.M. and tomorrow at 4:00 P.M.

One  clip with a CNC instructor at Lehigh CTC near Allentown, PA shows the jobs he has open and not enough candidates.

I will be talking with faculty from Cuyahoga Community College today about some internships for the fall.

The shortage of skilled workers is real.

The competitiveness of Manufacturing in North America has helped it to lead the recovery out of the last recession.

What are the trends that we face in Manufacturing going forward?

” I see two graphs that will determine the success of manufacturing.”

Up-Skilling

The following graph shows that since 2007, manufacturers have added more educated workers while eliminating less skilled / less educated positions:

Word to potential workers: Skills not labor to work in Manufacturing.

Increasingly employers are looking for credentials for skills rather than 2 and 4 year degrees.

Right Skills Now is one way for math capable candidates to get their start in a career in advanced manufacturing in CNC operations.

RSN curriculum

Demand for skilled workers “blues”:

The blue bar segments in the following graph shows us that as the baby boomer cohort leave the workforce, there are currently not enough under 25  and 25- 34 year olds to make up for their loss. This means that  not only will productivity increases have to continue, but also that we need to really make an effort to bring 34 and under people into our skilled workforce in manufacturing. This will certainly be a challenge for employers, and if nothing is done, will mean a new management version of  the  No Job Blues–  “the no skilled worker blues” – for our shops as we try to find candidates for open positions left by the departing boomers.

If you are a savvy shop, you are working on this issue today- if the average age of our manufacturing workers is 50, that means over half of our workforce are within a few short years of retirement.

What’s your plan for workforce and skill development in your shop, city, region and state?

How’s it working out for you?

Graphs : U.S. Economics and Statistics Administration, Mark Doms Chief Economist

Crystal Ball

High schools aren’t graduating people with skills that can add value in your shop.

Lorain County Community College is!

LCCC Fab Lab- Year of the Dragon was a great CAM project for their students.

From my encounters in retail with recent graduates,  just making change without a cash register is a difficult task.

Let alone using the Pythagorean Theorem to control geometry, runout, and cosine error.

Four year college graduates lack the skills we need in our shops more often than not.

Nothing wrong with being able to quote Yeats, but does it pay as much as being able to set up and operate this equipment?

Yet we have openings for people with skills.

Last night, 26 Northern Ohio Chapter members of the PMPA attended an open house of the advanced manufacturing labs at Lorain County Community College:

  • CAD Lab
  • Fab Lab
  • CNC Machining Lab
  • Welding Lab
  • Computer Integrated Manfacturing Lab
  • Manual Machining Lab

Our attendees were impressed with the equipment; they were quite impressed by the instructors.

They were delighted to sense the confidence, understanding, and capability shown by the students at work in the labs.

We may not know where the entire skilled workforce for our precision industry will come from, but we know  some local programs where we can find some skilled technicians.

The Nord Advanced Technologies Center at LCCC.

And the Entrepreneurship Innovation Institute at LCCC.