Connecticut’s 45 percent reduction in its manufacturing workforce over the past 21 years not only has created a shortage of positions but also a shortage of skilled workers for the few available job openings.
While they have no shortage of applicants, manufacturers across Connecticut have difficulty finding skilled people who can contribute immediately. This leaves employers with three unattractive options:
• Hire unskilled workers and put them through costly training, not knowing how long the new hire will stay;
• Leaving positions unfilled and paying overtime to the current workers;
• Or decreasing production.
“Often, we are anxious for someone who can be a contributor right away, but the applications we are getting don’t reflect that,” said Tom Orkisz, president of Inline Plastics, a Shelton packaging producer.
AMK Welding in South Windsor reached an all-time employment high of 58 in 2010 and wants to add four more employees in the coming months. While Connecticut’s workforce has good technical competence, AMK requires a very specific kind of welder that is hard to come by, said Brett Greene, AMK operations manager.
Once new people are brought on and trained, the key is keeping them and all the other employees happy, so vacant positions are few and far between, Greene said. AMK keeps its turnover low because parent company Dynamic Building Corp. provides quality pay and benefits.
“For the most part, our employees are pretty satisfied here,” Greene said.
In November, Connecticut production workers officially became the highest paid in the nation, making $1,001 per week on average. The state’s hourly earnings still come in second to Alaska, but Connecticut employees work 10 more hours per week.
Connecticut production employees have worked more than 40 hours per week on average for each of the past 10 years. In 2010, the average production employee worked 41.2 hours, a 10 percent increase over 2009.
This overtime problem is something that can be tough to handle, said Al Parlow, sales manager at Admill Machine, an aerospace parts supplier in New Britain. The cost of training people is an investment as well and can be expensive if the hires don’t pan out.
The education curriculum for the manufacturing workforce in Connecticut trade schools and high schools has all but disappeared, Parlow said. Companies should work with the state to go into schools to teach students about equipment, training and jobs.
“Manufacturing is a down market, and it is hard to get kids excited about that,” Parlow said.
When manufacturing companies leave the state, they often take their skilled workers with them, said Gerry Mastropietro, president of the Smaller Manufacturers Association of Connecticut Inc. This traps the state in a trend where its best companies and its best workers are leaving.
“It seems that the state just doesn’t want to recognize the importance of having manufacturing jobs here,” Mastropietro said.
Forty percent of Connecticut’s economy is linked to manufacturing; and for every $1 spent on manufacturing, $2 is produced in other areas, such as trucking, said Fred Carstensen, director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis.
To bolster the manufacturing workforce, the state could pay for a portion of training new hires, and work with the state’s universities to utilize their knowledge base for better-suited curriculums and technological innovation, Carstensen said. Unfortunately, Connecticut doesn’t do either of those, he explained.
“We have handicapped ourselves as comprehensively and as thoroughly as possible,” Carstensen said. “Could you design a worse environment for manufacturing? You could, but you would have to work at it.”
