Pennsylvania needs 15,000-17,000 skilled workers in manufacturing

Pennsylvania faces a critical shortage of skilled manufacturing workers, state and local officials said...The shortage is especially acute in the precision machining and industrial maintenance occupations, they said.

Speaking at Hamilton Precision Metals, officials unveiled a new report predicting a shortage of 15,000 to 17,000 of these two types of workers in the next decade. There now are 72,000 such workers in the state, the report says, but many are on the brink of retirement.

The report says the rising level of skills needed to handle these jobs, the aging work force and the lack of younger workers is a dire mix. "These challenges pose a threat to the ability of Pennsylvania advanced manufacturers to compete successfully as the economy rebounds from recession," the report says.

Robert Garraty, deputy secretary of the state Department of Labor & Industry, said the skills needed to function in the industrial workplace have risen dramatically. "Modern manufacturing has come a long way from the oil-soaked machine shops of the past," he said in a prepared statement.

"Today's employers need a work force with the skills and specialized training necessary to operate and maintain increasingly complex, computer-controlled manufacturing systems," he said. To help solve the shortage, Garraty called for more private-public partnerships that create training programs tailored to manufacturers' specific work force needs.

Precision machining occupations include machinist, tool and die maker, computer-controlled machine tool operator, and numerical tool and process control programmer.

Industrial maintenance occupations include electrical and electronic engineering technician, electro-mechanical technician, industrial engineering technician, mechanical engineering technician and millwright.

Source: LancasterOnline.com

 

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