It seems a silly conversation to be having in the midst of high unemployment and the continued, steady shedding of jobs, but nevertheless it's true: Many U.S. manufacturers are having difficulty finding the right people with the right skills to fill a variety of positions. It's not so much a skills shortage as it is a skills gap -- and there's looming concern that the gap will grow as baby boomers begin to retire.

In February a local manufacturer told the Green Bay (Wis.) Press-Gazette he had "a bunch" of high-skilled jobs open but didn't have people to fill the slots. As the economic downturn unfolded last year, a Utah-based engineer-to-order firm told IndustryWeek of its problems finding a qualified candidate. ACE Clearwater Enterprises of Los Angeles last October stated that it has experienced shortages of skilled workers for years. And a study released in 2009 by Deloitte, The Manufacturing Institute and Oracle revealed that nearly a third of companies were experiencing a modest to severe shortage. Gaps in such skills as problem-solving and communication also were noted in the study.

All that said, talk of a skills shortage is a long-standing conversation. For example, a 1997 study from the National Association of Manufacturers reported that 88% of manufacturers then were experiencing a shortage of skilled workers in at least one category. The same concern arose in a 2001 skills gap report. And in 2004 IndustryWeek wrote about the skills shortage at length.

The evidence suggests that appropriate training to meet current and forthcoming talent gaps remains elusive. Several factors help explain why. "It's not a simple problem so I don't know that there is a simple solution," says Chuck Parke, a faculty member in the Center for Executive Education at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Canon Virginia has hired and trained more than 300 new and current employees for new growth and expanded operations in Newport News.

Advances in technology explain the challenge in part, he suggests. As a result, "what was considered adequate 15 years ago would be nowhere near adequate today in certain machining applications," Parke says. A second factor he notes is the outsourcing of low-skilled jobs to low-labor-cost countries. "The remaining jobs require a much higher skill level, and the average has gone up in terms of the amount of training needed per employee." Parke also points to the high turnover rate of the workforce, due to layoffs, early buyouts of experienced workers and the mindset of many younger workers who don't come to a manufacturing company and stay. As a result, he says, "Some of those training dollars that could be allocated at one point to take people to a higher skill level are now having to be allocated just to get people up to do the minimum requirements of the job." And finally -- and possibly the largest factor, suggests Parke -- is that training frequently is among the first things cut when business is difficult. And manufacturing organizations have been under intense competitive pressure for the past 20 years, he notes.

Thomas A. Kochan, professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, says the basic problem is that U.S. manufacturing never has developed a close community of private industry and technical schools in any systematic way, although pockets of success exist. "There is underinvolvement in training because we leave it to the individual manufacturers," he says.

Six years ago Kochan noted a danger expressed by many today: the risk that manufacturers would use the excuse of a lack of skilled workers as a reason to move elsewhere. While he notes low-cost labor is a significant lure for increased offshoring in recent years, Kochan says the availability of talent has played its part. "Had we had a better-skilled workforce, I think we would have slowed the pace of decline," he says.

Training the Manufacturing Workforce

Kochan, who is co-director of the Institute for Work and Employment Research at MIT's Sloan School of Management, believes government should take a greater role "as a coordinating mechanism" to help develop a robust training process for manufacturing. He said the jobs bill under consideration by Congress provides an opportunity to build or rebuild a robust training program.

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