How Wisconsin Companies are Addressing the Skills Gap and Seeing Results
In the manufacturing industry, and all subsequent labor industries, there exists a real gap in labor and skills that threaten the future of work. And while a total shift will rely on internal industry and cultural change, here are a few ways Wisconsin companies are addressing the skills gap, and reaping the rewards.
In the manufacturing industry, and all subsequent labor industries, there exists a real gap in labor and skills that threaten the future of work. And while a total shift will rely on internal industry and cultural change, here are a few ways Wisconsin companies are addressing the skills gap, and reaping the rewards.
LOOSENING THE BLUE COLLAR
A low national unemployment rate rings positive for job-goers in nearly all sectors across the country, yet Wisconsin employers are feeling underwhelmed by the available applicant pool. This labor shortage is due, in part, to a large percentage of retiring employees and, in perhaps greater part, to a shrinking interest in the blue collar lifestyle from those new to workforce.
Whether it is coloring books with manufacturing themes or fourth grade tours of factories, the industry’s investment in early exposure and education is working to combat the various stigmas around blue collar work. In states like Wisconsin, it is an easier feat than, say, in many of the coastal states, but the post-secondary push toward academia has not gone unnoticed in the midwest.
GIVING HIGH SCHOOLERS OPTIONS
Investing in high school students can help steer those inclined to pursue some non-university post-high school education toward technical and trade school programs designed to feed the industry as opposed to sham colleges designed to profit from student ignorance and to take advantage of Federal funds without regard for the student’s career prospects. Even students set on attending a four-year college are—or should be—more open these days to alternative areas of study and modes of paying back the inevitable student debt.
It might not be the traditional path—from manual labor to management training, for example—but it is worth at least planting the idea of such alternative career paths in the minds of high schoolers or even current academics. Students could learn a trade while finishing their four-year degree, even if it means extending graduation by a year or so. Working a trade job during college not only adds that skillset to one’s repertoire, it increases options for both career paths and jobs post-graduation. It can also reduce the amount of student loans and might even help starting paying them down.
This is particularly attractive compared to the current trend in ever lengthening college careers, where it is common for students to take five, six, or even more years to earn a four-year degree, typically because they can’t afford college without working at least part-time jobs that pay just enough to keep them in school and going further into debt.
ATTRACTING VETERANS
Former service members represent a pool of potential trade skills workers that are both unique and numerous. While veterans are seldom young—at least not as young as new high school graduates—there are many who joined the service after high school and returned home at an age and with a mindset where attending a four-year university is both impracticable and undesirable. Unfortunately, it is difficult to earn a living wage these days without a trade skill and/or work-specific training.
With the training, experience, and tuition benefits received by nearly all entry level military personnel, veterans are prime candidates for trade school and on-the-job training programs that cost little in terms of time and resources. These programs enable vets to begin earning a solid living wage upon their return home. Veterans can take advantage of services like My Next Move to match up with a school or program tailored to their background and interests.
TRAINING CONVICTS
Another source of potential trade skills workers is the prison system. Women from the Robert Ellsworth correctional facility, for example, are able to participate in work release programs for computer numerical control at the local technical college. They tend to out-perform their non-convict classmates, and the fact that they are such well-trained, effective workers has resulted in a near-100% post-training employment rate for that particular facility.
Inmates in facilities like Robert Ellsworth have been able to accept part-time and full-time jobs from manufacturing plants and other employers through work release programs while still incarcerated. For inmates who still have an appreciable amount of time to serve, their negligible cost of living means employers can essentially dictate rates of pay. Employers are finding that even with skills gap-closing prison programs, they are having to raise rates of pay for trade laborers across the board, though arguably at a slower and lower rate than would otherwise be necessary.
INVESTING IN LOCAL MANUFACTURING FOR FOREIGN MANUFACTURERS
Wisconsin tax cuts for manufacturers are being used to attract oversees manufacturers, primarily from China. While foreign companies tend to bring their own employees from their home countries to set up shop, those foreign employees are typically used for less than one year while local American workers are recruited and trained. In areas like Wisconsin and Michigan where autoworkers and other blue collar jobs have been cut en masse over the past decade, many of those former employees are finally able to return to work in either the same or in a closely comparable trade.
