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The surprising truth about American manufacturing
The decline in American manufacturing is a common refrain, particularly
from Donald Trump. “We don’t make anything anymore,” he told Fox News last
October, while defending his own made-in-Mexico clothing line.
On Tuesday, in rust belt Pennsylvania, he doubled down, saying that he had
"visited cities and towns across this country where a third or even half of
manufacturing jobs have been wiped out in the last 20 years." The Pacific trade
deal, he added, "would be the death blow for American manufacturing."
Without question, manufacturing has taken a significant hit during recent
decades, and further trade deals raise questions about whether new shocks could
hit manufacturing.
But there is also a different way to look at the data.
In reality, United States manufacturing output is at an all-time high,
worth $2.2 trillion in 2015, up from $1.7 trillion in 2009. And while total
employment has fallen by nearly a third since 1970, the jobs that remain are
increasingly skilled.
Across the country, factory owners are now grappling with a new challenge:
Instead of having too many workers, as they did during the Great Recession, they
may end up with too few. Despite trade competition and outsourcing, American
manufacturing still needs to replace tens of thousands of retiring boomers every
year. Millennials may not be that interested in taking their place. Other
industries are recruiting them with similar or better pay. And those industries
don’t have the stigma of 40 years of recurring layoffs and downsizing.
“We’ve never had so much attention from manufacturers. They’re calling and
saying: ‘Can we meet your students?’ They’re asking, ‘Why aren’t they looking at
my job postings?' ” says Julie Parks, executive director of workforce training
at Grand Rapids Community College in western Michigan.
The region is a microcosm of the national challenge. Unemployment here is
low (around 3 percent, compared with a statewide average of 5 percent). There
aren’t many extra workers waiting for a job. And the need is high:1 in 5 people
work in manufacturing, churning out auto parts, machinery, plastics, office
furniture, and medical devices. Other industries, including agribusiness and
life sciences, are vying for the same workers.
For factory owners, it all adds up to stiff competition for workers – and
upward pressure on wages. “They’re harder to find and they have job offers,”
says Jay Dunwell, president of Wolverine Coil Spring, a family-owned firm. “They
may be coming [into the workforce], but they’ve been plucked by other industries
that are also doing as well as manufacturing,”
Mr. Dunwell has begun bringing high school juniors to the factory so they
can get exposed to its culture. He is also part of a public-private initiative
to promote manufacturing to students that includes job fairs and sending a
mobile demonstration vehicle to rural schools. One of their messages is that
factories are no longer dark, dirty, and dangerous; computer-run systems are the
norm and recruits can receive apprenticeships that include paid-for college
classes.
At RoMan Manufacturing, a maker of electrical transformers and welding
equipment that his father cofounded in 1980, Robert Roth keeps a close eye on
the age of his nearly 200 workers. Five are retiring this year. Mr. Roth has
three community-college students enrolled in a work-placement program, with a
starting wage of $13 an hour that rises to $17 after two years.
At a worktable inside the transformer plant, young Jason Stenquist looks
flustered by the copper coils he’s trying to assemble and the arrival of two
visitors. It’s his first week on the job; this is his first encounter with Roth,
his boss. Asked about his choice of career, he says at high school he considered
medical school before switching to electrical engineering.
“I love working with tools. I love creating,” he says.
But to win over these young workers, manufacturers have to clear another
major hurdle: parents, who lived through the worst US economic downturn since
the Great Depression, telling them to avoid the factory. Millennials “remember
their father and mother both were laid off. They blame it on the manufacturing
recession,” says Birgit Klohs, chief executive of The Right Place, a business
development agency for western Michigan.
These concerns aren’t misplaced: Employment in manufacturing has fallen
from 17 million in 1970 to 12 million in 2015. The steepest declines came after
2001, when China gained entry to the World Trade Organization and ramped up
exports of consumer goods to the US and other rich countries. In areas exposed
to foreign trade, every additional $1,000 of imports per worker meant a $550
annual drop in household income per working-age adult, according to a 2013 study
in the American Economic Review. And unemployment, Social Security, and other
government benefits went up $60 per person.
The 2008-09 recession was another blow. And advances in computing and
robotics offer new ways for factory owners to increase productivity using fewer
workers.
When the recovery began, worker shortages first appeared in the
high-skilled trades. Electricians, plumbers, and pipefitters are in in short
supply across Michigan and elsewhere; vocational schools and union-run
apprenticeships aren’t keeping pace with demand and older tradespeople are
leaving the workforce. Now shortages are appearing at the mid-skill levels.
“The gap is between the jobs that take no skills and those that require a
lot of skill,” says Rob Spohr, a business professor at Montcalm Community
College an hour from Grand Rapids. “There’s enough people to fill the jobs at
McDonalds and other places where you don’t need to have much skill. It’s that
gap in between, and that’s where the problem is.”
Ms. Parks of Grand Rapids Community College points to another key to luring
Millennials into manufacturing: a work/life balance. While their parents were
content to work long hours, young people value flexibility. “Overtime is not
attractive to this generation. They really want to live their lives,” she
says.
Roth says he gets this distinction. At RoMan, workers can set their own
hours on their shift, choosing to start earlier or end later, provided they get
the job done. That the factory floor isn’t a standard assembly line – everything
is custom-built for industrial clients – makes it easier to drop the
punch-clocks.
“People have lives outside,” Roth says. “It’s not always easy to schedule
doctors’ appointments around a ‘punch-in at 7 and leave at 3:30’ schedule.”
While factory owners like Roth like to stress the flexibility of
manufacturing careers, one aspect is nonnegotiable: location. Millennials
looking for a job that allow them to work from home are not likely to get a
callback. "I'm not putting a machine tool in your garage," says Roth.
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发表于 2016-12-24 19:52:52