The search for skilled labor

Jason Stein

The massive ramp-up meant bringing hundreds of welders back from layoffs or off the street, but Wahlin said his Stoughton business never placed a single ad seeking these key workers.

The reason is simple yet surprising: Though the state's manufacturing industry has lost more than 90,000 jobs since 2001, Wahlin doesn't believe there are any welders who would answer an ad from Stoughton Trailers.

He could say the same for machinists and operators of automated equipment, the kinds of experienced, tech-savvy workers that factory owners need to take their plants into the future.

"We don't advertise for welders. There aren't welders," said Wahlin, who has had to train workers in-house. "There's lots of bodies out there, but they don't have the skills." Wahlin's problems may be just beginning.

From nurses to press operators, there's a lack of skilled workers in the capital region and nationwide.

Local business leaders and economists see labor gaps opening in health care, manufacturing and construction ? industries that together account for about a quarter of Dane County's work force. In addition, information technology workers are coming back into demand, and recruiters at area financial firms are looking harder to find accountants and actuaries.

As the economy improves, Madison's low unemployment rate is expected to sink further, making the national problem even more serious locally.

To this short-term challenge, employers can add an even larger long-term one: The retirement of baby boomers is pulling workers out of some of the most in-demand professions.

Fewer and fewer young workers are being trained to replace them. These bottlenecks matter to employers. They cost companies money in higher wages and training costs and they slow growth at local businesses that are poised to expand.

Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development Secretary Roberta Gassman called the skills shortage "one of the biggest challenges before our state" but one the state could meet.

"It's just going to take very focused, aggressive work," Gassman said.

Labor squeeze to tighten Federal statistics show the Madison area had an incredibly low unemployment rate of 2.1 percent in December, meaning just over 6,000 people out of a labor force of some 295,000 were looking for jobs that now just a decade from retirement.

State projections show Wisconsin's work force needs about 1,020 new carpenters a year, but only 340 carpentry graduates are coming out of the state's apprenticeship and tech college programs.

"I wouldn't say that it's been a direct impact on our company, but we're nervous that it could be," Martin said. "We see fewer and fewer of the young workers expressing interest in the same trades." Educator Dave Shonkwiler of Madison Area Technical College sees a pipeline problem for these in-demand workers.

Shonkwiler, dean of MATC's training division for technical and industrial workers, said a lack of resources slows teaching; MATC's one-year welding program graduated only 19 workers last year.

Programs from auto repair to construction trades have one- to two-year waiting lists at MATC, with thousands of students waiting at technical colleges statewide, he said. For health-care careers, 6,450 tech college students were waiting for training, according to a 2003 report from the Wisconsin Technical College System.

"You translate that into employees with skills and training coming into the job market, and it's a huge loss of potential," Shonkwiler said.

Blue-collar perceptions are changing

For some jobs, like those in the printing industry, the problem can be finding enough students interested in the career, Shonkwiler said. Pressman Dennis Schwenn, 28, of Suttle-Straus thinks he knows why: Among people of his generation, blue-collar jobs get no respect.

"People don't like to get their hands dirty anymore," said Schwenn, who's far from the common misconception of a manufacturing worker repeating unchallenging tasks.

A worker like Schwenn commands respect in the labor market; he can handle constantly changing print runs on a modern 60-footlong press that can spit out 16,000 sheets an hour.

Yet for many young people, news reports of plant layoffs and overseas outsourcing have made such jobs seem more like an endangered species than a lifelong career.

For that, employers themselves bear part of the responsibility, Ludeman said.

"Other industries kind of hold on to people during lean times, and manufacturers haven't been very good at it," Ludeman said.

"Companies have to start thinking about workers as part of the assets of the company." Stoughton Trailers is a good example of how challenging it can be to hold onto workers. Hit by what top exec Wahlin calls the trucking industry's worst downturn in four decades, the firm laid off threefourths of its work force, which dropped from 1,700 to 400 in 2002.

To stay on the payroll, foremen and skilled technicians had to go to work building trailers, Wahlin said.

But the example also shows how quickly an excess of workers can turn into a shortage. Since 2004, a stream of new orders has sent a rising number of semitrailers rolling out of the plants and has increased the firm's employment back up to 1,300.

The company is working on a $10 million plant upgrade, and Wahlin thinks the business will hire 100 to 150 more workers over the next year.

"There's always a demand for skilled people, even in down times," Wahlin said. "If somebody like that walked in the door and wanted a job, absolutely we'd hire him right away."

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