Skill Requirements Increase and Manufacturing Jobs stay Unfilled
Despite widespread fears and outrage over the decline of factory work in the United States thousands of such jobs are going unfilled across the country. Labor department data shows that the number of open factory jobs has been rising since 2009, and this year reached its highest level in 15 years.
The gulf between public perception and the reality is caused by the fact that the sort of laborers people associate with factory work, and who have seen the greatest losses in the sector in recent decades, are not qualified to do the sort of jobs that are available. The factory work of 2016 is tech driven and requires certain skills that laid off factory workers simply haven’t been trained for. Factory jobs now require college degrees. Read more on the so called “upskilling” and its implications for the economy at the Wall Street Journal.