When you think of factory labor this might come to mind: Dangerous conditions with overcrowded
assembly lines of people completing repetitive tasks for long hours.
But the workforce in manufacturing is facing a major overhaul.
Although automation and offshoring have shrunk manufacturing jobs drastically over the past
few decades, the industry is actually adding jobs now.
But they look really different.
Manufacturers are quick to adapt automation and change the way we make our products – now
we need to change how we “make” our workers, and there's one solution with bipartisan support.
More apprenticeships; youth apprenticeships; apprenticeships; apprenticeship; two-year
apprenticeship.
I'll be signing an executive order to expand apprenticeships and vocational training to
help all Americans find a rewarding career, earn a great living, and support themselves
and their families and love going to work in the morning.
Apprenticeships differ from other training programs in a few ways: They have to offer
combined classroom or conceptual learning with on-the-job mentored training.
Apprentices must be employed and paid by the firm and they have to last at least a year
ending with a degree, certification or both.
This means that apprentices earn on-the-job experience while building an educational foundation
simultaneously – and make money while they’re doing it.
But there’s a marketing problem in the United States.
When Americans think of apprenticeships they often see think of this “old-timey” training
for blue-collar work – and that’s not our fault.
The vast majority of apprenticeships in America are concentrated in the construction field
and they rely heavily on contributions from Union laborers.
Even then, we don't have that many apprenticeships to begin with.
Here in the US a four year degree has been seen as a golden ticket to economic mobility
and higher paying jobs and this blue-collar-bias with apprenticeships has Americans viewing
it as a lesser alternative to higher education.
In countries like Germany and Australia, students can get an apprenticeship in nearly any profession
from IT to banking to hospitality and advanced manufacturing.
Many of these students go on to complete a four year degree on top of the certifications.
Americans are already struggling with the rising costs of higher education and the job
market isn’t making it easy to see a return.
So while thousands of people came out of colleges with degrees in highly desired STEM fields,
74 percent of them are currently working in unrelated professions.
And yet, manufacturers are citing a problem.
The manufacturing industry is projecting three and a half million new jobs over the next
decade – two million of which, they claim, won’t be filled due to a “skills gap.”
The skills needed?
Higher proficiency in Math, computers and tech.
So despite there being plenty of people with the degrees they’re not often looking to
manufacturing for work and there could be a few reasons for that.
We have employers that want workers that know high school math and read at a college level
and want to pay them ten dollars an hour and then they feel that there's a skill shortage.
For me, what there is is a wage shortage.
And maybe it's a bit of both – the manufacturing industry has been working to change years
of public perception.
They think of the old manufacturing – The mills, dark, dirty environment – we have
to change that perception.
This stigma has followed the manufacturing industry since the Industrial Revolution,
when people worked for hours on end for little pay.
In England, so called “apprentices” were often orphaned children recruited to work
in dangerous conditions in exchange for pennies or room and board.
With the development of labor unions and the implementation of child labor laws conditions
in factories drastically changed.
Wages went up, hours went down, and then companies began to automate and offshore jobs.
Foreign labor and industrial robots allowed manufacturers to lower costs and increase
production.
It also cost the US nearly 6 million jobs in a single decade.
But now, as automation progresses, some of the factories are coming back.
The new jobs offered, though, are far from low-skilled assembly line work.
Ten years ago, 15 years ago we could have a mechanic and then we would have an electrician.
And then you had maybe a robotics person.
Well, now we need all those skills in one individual.
t's like a Swiss army knife.
You want somebody with different skill sets and the new industry and the new economy.
That's what it demands.
That “swiss army knife” of a worker needs a combination of skills but not technically
the full proficiency of an electrical or mechanical engineer.
What’s needed is something in-between.
Companies like BMW in the Carolinas use apprenticeships to build the skilled workforce that they need
by raising the technical proficiency of an existing workforce, which is what apprenticeships
do best.
It doesn't really feel like work.
It feels like I'm just training all the time.
I'm always trying to learn, and our supervisors put us into positions where we need to learn.
In countries like Germany, apprenticeships are built into their educational system.
Nearly 60% of German high school students enter an apprenticeship.
And as a result their youth unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the world.
It also helps in the long-run: Apprenticeship programs have been considered a staple in
Germany’s economic strength.
Apprenticeships offer a direct connection between education and employment making it
a natural fit for the ebbs and flows of the economy.
About half of apprentices land full time jobs after their training is finished.
In Germany the view is that a worker is an investment rather than of a cost.
You assume that the worker is going to be there a long time.
So of course you want to invest in making that worker as productive as possible.
Yet, in the United States, employers are wary to spend time and money on training without
concrete numbers that show a return on investment.
When you talk about apprentice program and training it's really hard to come up with
your hard core number.
If you do it just numbers as a budgeting does a little bit intangible but when you see the
benefits of the workforce – How's that working towards quality here – it's very tangible,
in my opinion, the quality of that investment.
BMW has set up shop in South Carolina and is utilizing a German-inspired, American-made
apprenticeship program.
The Carolina’s are unique in that they have a state-funded workforce development program
that pairs companies with technical schools in the area.
This allows companies to craft employees to the needs of the industry with custom-built
training programs while directly communicating with apprentices and their needs.
I really thought like OK they're going to like work like crazy and then I'm not going
to be able to get caught up on my school and things are going to suffer.
No they told us that education is first.
Doing that and having the flexibility in our work schedules really helps out.
So when I'm learning something at school I come here and I'm actually doing it more hands-on
I'm using it in a practical field.
The companies invest in their apprentices for 2 years, covering their tuition at the
technical college and offering on-the-job training in between.
Apprentices finish the program with an associate's degree, one or more certifications and, often
times, a full-time job with the company.
Even if the apprentices don’t take the job offer, it’s not a technically a huge loss
to the company since they actually work.
Employers can pay apprentices less than they pay full-time employees, but they’re still
contributing to the company as they learn.
The more we can bring up the technical skill within the workforce.
I think we're all going to ultimately benefit in better products.
Higher wages and things of that nature.
So yeah, I look at it as a long term investment, maybe, you know, in the U.S. workforce.
Automation is a present reality in manufacturing and it's continuously raising the bar for
factory labor.
It's true that companies need to invest in robotics to improve their production lines
but workers can't be left behind as a result.
While the days of interchangeable employees are coming to a close, there's a long way
to go before humans become obsolete.
Successfully investing in this automated future starts with developing the human workforce.