Warning! Warning! You have pushed Bryan's Hot Button!
Be careful what you ask for...Vermont's situation is something like this:
Population: about 628,000 people in 2018.
We are losing something like 1,000 people annually the past three years, predictions of a loss of 11,000 people across the state is predicted over the next 5 years.
Unemployment in Chittenden county, the most populous of the state and seat of Burlington, is currently at 1.5% the lowest ever recorded in VT history and somebody claims this is the lowest in the country. Another person at the Chamber told me that Burlington was at 0.9%! That's great, right!?
There are something like 8 Centers of Technical Excellence (CTE or Vocational Schools) in Vermont. Where I live in Saint Albans, they have a welding program, auto tech program, building trades, engineering, cosmotology, digital design, and they continue to add more. My 18 year will graduate this year as a Sr. with 3-4 college credits and a completed internship in the Digital Design program.
Starting wages in our factory in Burlington with ZERO experience is $14/hr. Most people are coming in with a couple of years experience and getting $16-18/hr. Journeyman Electrician's are starting at $20-25/hr. Master Plumbers and Electricians are naming their price and people are paying it. With the shortage of labor, I've heard stories of some of these guys making six figures just by signing up for OT.
Our machinists are making mid $20 and up. Most fabrication jobs, press operators, CNC sheetmetal machine operators, etc. are $17-21/hr.
When I tell people who are working in a grocery store that we are hiring - after listening to them complain about their pay - and I tell them what we pay...I wish I had a nickel for every time I get a blank stare in return and we never see them apply.
I've participated in a State driven initiative pushed by the governor. It is funded by the DOE and it is a program to fast track and recruit people into what is something like a Manufacturing Talent Pipeline. We have worked with ALL of the CTEs, third party training providers, local community colleges and other manufacturers we compete with for local labor - with the idea that we need to get kids interested and educated in Manufacturing. Almost all of the programs created to date have been utilized by incumbent employees, there have been no recruits to come through the program in the year that the initiative was launched.
There is a National Event in October - Manufacturing Day. Companies all around the country are encouraged to hold open houses and contact schools to get kids to come in and visit the factory and get a sense of what a modern career in advanced U.S. manufacturing looks like. I can't get CTE directors or high school administrators or teachers to signup. Several excuses I've heard: don't have the bus money in the budget, I can't take only the interested few - have to bring everyone to make it fair, not in our charter, need to get approval, nobody is interested, etc.
Here is the thing - the kids aren't interested in manufacturing. And I got to tell you, I've spent a bunch of time with the legislators and educators on this and after listening to what they are up against - I conclude that
it is the parents. Nobody wants their kids working in a factory. They are pushing, pushing, pushing university education. Some people blame the teachers for this. I don't. They are parents too. And everyone thinks factories are some relic of the past - that somehow we are beyond that old fashioned time, right?! I've heard some pretty distorted views of what people think factory life is like. Or worse AND incorrectly they think manufacturing
is going away because of automation or China - nobody wants anything to do with it. We have done a terrible job about telling people what our lives are like.
The last thing that bugs me is the manufacturers themselves. There is a lot of finger-pointing at the state. I'm not a fan of Vermont politics and I know I'm brushing up against the forum rules here, but Vermont is such a small state with almost no resources except its people. Manufacturers absolutely have the power to make change and have a seat at the table with the people they want to hire - many are content to shift blame to the state and the teachers because that seems like the fashionable and easy thing to do.
The educators see the writing on the wall in Vermont. There was a survey in April 2019:
vtroundtable.org
- When asked, “Are you more or less optimistic about the general business climate in your sector compared to three months ago?”…overall the responses were largely neutral or negative. The Manufacturing sector expressed the most optimism (40%), while the Education sector had the most pessimistic outlook (43%).
Conclusion: very few jobs, talent is leaving, resources are in abundance, nobody is looking for jobs in our sector and many companies have sort of just thrown up their hands. As a result, the vocational schools are starting to shift their attention to nursing, professional services, coding and other service related trades. This isn't bad for those industries, but for manufacturers, sadly I think the last of the vocational schools are permanently transformed and have abandoned manufacturing. Do I think high schools should take this on? YES. Will they? NO. They have no incentive to do so.