Executive Editor
A skills gap is making it difficult to fill manufacturing jobs, according to many estimates. A Sept. 1 report in The Wall Street Journal says openings for manufacturing jobs have averaged 353,000 per month this year, up from 122,000 in 2009. The article cites a 2015 survey by Deloitte and the nonprofit Manufacturing Institute reporting that eight in 10 manufacturing executives say an expanding skills gap will inhibit their ability to keep up with demand.
On the other hand, Ben Casselman writing Sept. 8 at FiveThirtyEight, sees scant evidence that a skills gap exists. If it did, he says, wages should be rising and overtime increasing, neither of which seems to be happening. Some companies, he adds, are looking for “hyperspecific skills” that outsiders can’t be expected to have, and it’s easy today for companies to post “openings” they have no urgency to fill. He further notes that even today, few manufacturing jobs require certification or education beyond high school, with 80% of manufacturing workers lacking an associate or bachelor’s degree.
Nevertheless, AT&T is one company acting as if a skills gap does exist, and not just in manufacturing. According to John Donovan, chief strategy officer and a group president at AT&T, and Cathy Benko, vice chairman and managing principal at Deloitte, writing in the October issue of the Harvard Business Review, most of AT&T’s 280,000 employees received their education and foundational training in an earlier era, and the company is mounting an effort to rapidly retrain its employees and “engender a culture of perpetual learning.”
They report that since 2013, AT&T has annually spent $250 million on employee education and professional development programs and $30 million in tuition assistance to train 140,000 employees—including union employees—for new roles.
Retraining options range from individual courses (the majority of which are online) to fully accredited online master’s degree programs in computer science in conjunction with Georgia Tech and Udacity. Yet another option is the “nanodegree,” which usually takes six to 12 months to earn.
As for the lack of wage increases that Casselman cites—that could be because retrained workers are making lateral moves. In a Q&A with Harvard Business Review’s Eben Harrell, Benko says that the industrial-age corporate ladder (which you could climb by being promoted to higher paying jobs) has been replaced by the digital-age lattice with multidirectional paths.
If the skills gap does exist, many companies will lack AT&T’s capability to close it, and at least for manufacturing jobs, community colleges have a role to play. As an example, Greenville Technical College (GTC) joined with Clemson University, Greenville County Schools, local manufacturers, economic development leaders, and officials from state and local governments to establish the Gene Haas Center for Manufacturing Innovation (CMI). The goal for the CMI is to provide skilled manufacturing workers for employers in South Carolina’s Upstate region.
“Using traditional methods to increase the pipeline of qualified workers for advanced manufacturing just won’t work,” said Dr. Keith Miller, president of GTC, during ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrating the opening of the CMI in September. “In Greenville County, we are taking a new approach with the CMI, breaking traditions and innovating to close the skills gap.”
As for what individuals can do, Benko in the Harvard Business Review says that earning a degree isn’t enough—education must take place along the continuum of your career. She advises regularly checking online job-posting sites to determine what skill sets employers are seeking. She adds that the experience and relationships that got you your current job are transferrable to the future. And finally, instead of looking to climb the corporate ladder, be prepared to make lateral or diagonal moves.
