This interesting and on the money commentary was provided by Brian Kelsey.
The U.S. economy may be shedding jobs at the moment, but don't think for a minute that it's affected demand for skilled workers, especially in production occupations. Do a search for machinist or welder on Monster.com and you'll see what I mean. Counting both new and replacement jobs, there are expected to be nearly 130,000 openings for welders between 2008 and 2018--that's 30 percent of today's entire welding workforce that will need to be replaced in ten years. We'll need almost twice that number of people to fill first-line supervisor and manager positions. In fact, despite all the talk this campaign season about offshoring and pernicious impacts of trade agreements, the U.S. economy is expected to add approximately 688,000 production jobs during the next ten years. Factor in retirements and other replacement needs and that total jumps to 3.8 million. Median wage: $18.23 per hour. There will be some declines, such as in photographic processing and some electronic equipment assemblers. However, overall, total new and replacement job growth in the U.S. economy for production workers is expected to be a robust 33 percent between 2008 and 2018.
Where we do need more attention paid by politicians and others is on the supply side. In 2006, postsecondary education institutions reporting data to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) handed out 47,905 degrees, certificates, and other types of awards in programs of study related to production occupations. That's only 70 percent of the workers needed to fill new production jobs, not to even mention replacement jobs. According to NCES data, compiled by EMSI, there were 2,692 completions in machine tool technology education programs in 2006. Compare that to the 10,000 machinist job openings expected annually during 2008-18. Many of these jobs can be filled by high school graduates, but not all of them, especially in a world where manufacturing is getting leaner and more advanced. Postsecondary education is no longer an afterthought for production careers in an innovation-based economy.
Some regions are doing better closing the workforce gap than others. Looking for students ready to enter or re-enter the production workforce? Head to career fairs in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston. Schools there are churning out more than 1,000 awards annually in production related fields of study. How about regions with the competitive advantage of high concentrations of production workers? Check out Tupelo, MS, Camden, AR, and Owensboro, KY. What about regions experiencing manufacturing employment declines, where available workers could be transitioned to jobs requiring similar skills in other industries? Consider Rochester, NY, Cleveland, OH, or Milwaukee, WI. We should be hearing more about how national policy can help regions create innovative solutions for dealing with these workforce trends.
The politicians are correct to call this a crisis; they're just not referring to the right one.
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