High Demand for Machinists in the U.S. [???]
February 16th, 2012There is a critical shortage of machinists?
Really?
Millions of people are out of work and these companies can’t fill these positions because of lack of skills?
Via: CNN:
U.S. factories are creating many new jobs. But owners are hard pressed to find skilled American workers to fill them.
There is a “critical shortage of machinists,” a common and crucial position in factories, said Rob Akers, vice president at the National Tooling and Machining Association. “Enrollment in this field in technical schools has been down for a long time.”
The problem comes at a terrible time. Domestic contract manufacturers — known as “job shops” — are seeing a boom in business.
In the case of Win-Tech, a Kennesaw, Ga., manufacturer, orders are coming in fast and furious from its customers in the defense and aerospace industries.
But the company’s owner Dennis Winslow is more concerned than elated.
Winslow’s been trying to add 12 more workers to his staff of 42 to meet the increased demand, but he’s struggling.
“I’m facing a real conundrum,” he said. “There are so many unemployed people in the country. But I can’t find the skill sets that I need. I would hire tomorrow if I could.”
For more than a year, Winslow has been looking for manual machinists, quality control inspectors and machinists trained to use computer-controlled systems.
He said he may be forced to hire people who are not fully skilled, and then train them.
…
As the United States outsourced its manufacturing jobs over the last few decades, the country lost a significant chunk of its manufacturing talent pool, said Mitch Free, CEO of MFG.com, an online directory that matches businesses with domestic manufacturers.
“Now, as manufacturing is slowly coming back, we just don’t have this talent quickly available,” said Free, a machinist by training.
Related: Dumping China for American Job Shops
“He said he may be forced to hire people who are not fully skilled, and then train them.”
OMG!!! the shock!!! businesses training their own workers!!! who would have even dreamed it???
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/making-it-in-america/8844/?single_page=true
Here is a good article related to this.
I am a journeyman machined parts inspector and was a lead inspector in the largest machine shop in the “free world.” What these hiring managers are saying is that they want journeyman machinists (manual…that’s 4 years of on and off hours training) that have CNC programming experience (another 2 years of training) and they want them right off the street and they want them right now and they want them for less money than they can get them for in non-union foreign sweat shops. I’ll tell you why they can’t get them: It ain’t for lack of available skill- it’s because these machinists who have the equivalent of masters degrees and 25 years of experience are smart enough not to go to work in non-union job shops where they are such on swing shift and make less than $18/hr when they can make $55/hr as CNC programmers working from home or by running their own job shops in their garages making aerospace widgets for $200/hr. Believe me, I know scores of these people because I inspected their parts for 25 years.
BTW, in a typical job shop, you screw up one part and you are immediately fired by foremen that are slave drivers. So where is the incentive to become a machinist in a non union job shop? There is zero percent chance of attaining journeyman status there because that is a union benefit, like it or not.
It is hard to find and train people with the physical ability, math skills, and attention to detail to be machinists. Many experienced machinists are not willing or able to transition to the computer based state of the art.
Most of the training programs have closed down. It is one of those professions where a large portion of the experienced workers are all reaching retirement at the same time.
Something I forgot to mention- due to the cyclical nature of aerospace, it’s not just difficult to attract good help, but keeping it is hard when you lay off the same guys 3 times in 15 years and they are on the bricks for 18 months at a time.
The other thing that is hard for the general public to understand is that true machinists are skilled in manually setting up each cut on the piece they are working on. Yet you can have an unskilled laborer loading material into a machine that has multiple spindles turning 45,000 rpm and knocking out compound contours wing ribs in 45 minutes if the programming is correct. The shop I was in had 1,100 machines in it in 1986, most of them manual or nc (tape). Now they have maybe 150 enormous “machining centers” that produce many times as much work in the same footprint.
When THEY say there is a shortage of any type worker, that is code for: they don’t want to pay a supply and demand level wage.