When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Glastonbury aeroparts manufacturer HABCO Industries LLC was on a hiring spree.
The company, which designs and makes testing and support equipment for airframes and engines, added 42 employees in Connecticut last year, and CEO Brian Montanari doesn’t see that slowing down even in the face of the coronavirus, thanks to a strong defense-contracts backlog. In fact, the economic fallout from the pandemic could help HABCO’s hiring prospects.
“Now there’s an unintended benefit for us — people are going to be less likely to have the plethora of opportunities they might have,” Montanari said. “It’s exciting for us to be able to get some additional talent, but it’s still a sad thing.”
Not all Connecticut manufacturers will be able to take advantage of the sudden surge in unemployed workers as the economic downturn has hit the industry unevenly, said Eric Brown, vice president of manufacturing policy and outreach for the Connecticut Business & Industry Association.
Many companies aren’t thinking much about hiring in the short term, said Brown, who has been meeting via teleconference with members of the Connecticut Manufacturer’s Collaborative industry group three times per week since pandemic shutdowns began in mid-March.
“I think it will be some time before a lot of companies feel like they know what the next 12 months are going to be like for hiring,” Brown said. “Hiring typically occurs when businesses have confidence about the marketplace, and obviously this is not a time of high confidence.”
Connecticut manufacturers did add 500 positions in March, despite the state shedding a net 7,500 jobs. The industry, which employs 163,000 people statewide, has been deemed essential by Gov. Ned Lamont so it’s been allowed to stay open despite other parts of the economy being forced to shutter.
However, many manufacturers — including giants like East Hartford jet-engine maker Pratt & Whitney, Farmington elevator producer Otis Worldwide Corp. and New Britain-based toolmaker Stanley Black & Decker — have recently announced layoffs or furloughs.
And Connecticut’s reliance on aerospace production — by far the largest manufacturing segment in the state, which nearly doubled the number of available positions in 2018, according to the National Association of Manufacturers — poses significant economic risks at a time when COVID-19 has decimated commercial air travel.
Bradley International Airport, for example, reported last month its passenger travel was down some 90%.
Some are predicting it will take years for commercial aviation to return to pre-COVID-19 levels.
So, while some companies have been able to shift production to making personal protective equipment, and others are being less impacted by coronavirus — HABCO, for example, spent the past seven years diversifying to be less dependent on commercial aerospace — the pandemic could heavily impact manufacturing in Connecticut, Brown said.
But a small silver lining in the effort to bolster Connecticut’s graying manufacturing workforce, Brown said, is the increasing availability of online education and certification programs.
“This will help the unemployed and underemployed, giving them opportunities to earn certificates and upskill themselves,” Brown said. “When companies do start hiring that will mean our workforce is better prepared than prior to COVID.”
A program used by the Eastern Connecticut Workforce Investment Board for about a decade will play a significant role in workforce development in the weeks and months ahead, said Kelli-Marie Vallieres, CEO of sister companies Sound Manufacturing and Monster Power Equipment in Old Saybrook, and co-chair of the Governor’s Workforce Council.
The program, 180 Skills, is an online manufacturing education platform that includes tracks for people just entering the industry who need to learn the basics, as well as manufacturing professionals looking to upskill, Vallieres said. The program will soon be available at no cost to any unemployed Connecticut resident.
Additionally, Vallieres said, the pandemic forced instructors teaching existing in-person manufacturing courses to take their programs online. Much like university professors, some have now found efficient ways to teach content in remote settings and through hybrid coursework. That could enable more people to take online courses, qualifying them for some manufacturing jobs on their own time.
“With this crisis, all of these manufacturing instructors have been thrown in the deep end of the pool with no swimming lessons,” Vallieres said. “Now that they’ve got some experience and now that we have some additional resources like 180 Skills that we can give them, I think we’re going to come out of this with hybrid models, because we, out of necessity, built innovation.”
