Fred16

Interesting article on NBC nightly news last night

Siemens have 3,500 vacancies and yet can't find Americans with skills in maths and mechanics to take these jobs

I was shocked!
Why!

Also my thoughts
Will be the same for pilots in 15 years

meauxna

Without a link to the item, it's hard to know exactly what you want to discuss WRT 'why'.

I guess it's like 'Why did you post this in the immigration forum?'. Just hard to know.

GeoffM

Siemens is not the most popular company in the world, at least from the point of view of some customers and subcontractors IMX.

No idea what the link to pilots is.

rculater

No -pushing buttons requires little skill.

cluedweasel

Unfortunately, links on the NBC news website seem to be dynamic. The best I can do is to suggest going to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/ns/nightly_news and then searching for Siemens Jobs. The item in question should be the 2nd result.

I've noticed the difficulty of recruiting skilled people too. A friend of mine is trying to get a network administrator for his business. No luck whatsoever locally despite the 18% unemployment rate here. No one from outside the area wants to move here either.

One difference I've noticed between the UK and the US is that in the UK, businesses seem to be more willing to take someone with potential on board and train them. Here they seem to want someone to go right into the position. If they can't do that, then they're not interested.

That's where the education system comes in I guess. Unfortunately our local community college churns out people who can't tell RAM from ROM and a switch from a router, let alone what a firewall is.

Brit3964

As for pilots, the industry is and always has been cyclic here. 2 years ago you couldn't find any jobs and now there is a mini-hiring boom, helped in part by the imminent FAA pt. 121 duty rule change. Supposedly there will be a strong hiring boom in the near future because of retirements also. However these stories periodically surface and it never actually happens.

Bob

It's the right to fire which bites the business in the butt here I think.

Why spend money/time training someone up when they'll bugger off to a competitor with all the skills needed, when you can wait it out and look for someone who is ready to go.

The cure for that of course, don't be a shit employer that they'll want to leave as soon as they can

Michael

Many companies claim the same. Typically a company will have job openings with specific skills (ex. 10 years experience working on a specific product) but when the job market is tight, the company fills those positions with recent college graduates.

Now that there a plenty of engineers looking for a job, the company becomes much more picky requiring an absolute match.

In fact on CNBC, a CEO was claiming that they needed about 2,000 skilled blue collar workers but couldn't find people with the necessary skills. In other words, they can't find enough people with the exact skills that are willing to pay their own relocation costs for a salary of about $40,000 per year.

A good example of this occurred in the late 1990s during the internet boom where my son without a college degree studied HTML programming at home and was offered a $70,000 per year job as a HTML programmer. Today the same companies won't hire a HTML programmer unless an applicant has a college degree along with 5-10 years of HTML programming experience so they have job openings that they can't fill due to lack of skills.

Redwing

It was reported today, that the South has a skilled worker shortage. I know of 2 local facilities that have been trying to fill maintenance positions for months. They are willing to train new hires, and start off at $15 and hour. However, when the applicants work out that after deductions, they are only about $2 an hour better off than drawing uneployment, they say it is not worth it to them. I don't know how they get away with that. 4 years ago, I learned that TVA was in need of Xray welders. Yesterday I heard that they were still needing them.

Michael

I doubt if it is quite as simple as you make it seem. I suspect that the company wants people that have already worked in a similar job and will train them on their equipment. How is someone who was making $35 per hour and has mortgage payments of $1,000 per month and another $300 per month in car payments supposed to take a job that pays $15 per hour? If he takes that job, he guarantees that he will lose the house and possibly the car but if he keeps looking, he may be able to save both.

I bet you there are thousands of recent high school graduates in the area that would take those jobs at the drop of a hat but the employer doesn't want to train them from scratch. As far as the TVA xray welders, they are probably looking for experienced welders. If their wages were competitive, they would likely be able to fill the positions but like most other government jobs, wages are less in exchange for a more secure job.

Nothing is as it seems in the newspapers. People, like corporations, can't continue to exist if they can't continue to pay reoccurring expenses.

Redwing

With respect, it is a little different from that. The aforementioned companies have similar requirements to ours, and I have worked in 3 of our plants in southern Appalachia, being involved in some of the training in 2 of them. The positions are middle skill level postions, such as electricians, mechanics, and machinists, requiring a high school diploma or GED. For some of the jobs, it is preferable for the applicants to have no prior experience, since it is a lot easier to train them, rather than untrain and retrain. From what I am told, no applicant was earning close to $35 an hour, but I get your drift.

With regard to the TVA Xray welders, I should have been more explicit. The jobs are with contractors who work for TVA. A committeeman for the P & P local says the union rate is $25 to $27 per hour. BTW, an Xray welder is a skilled one rather than an experienced one. There is a difference.