Hiring challenges persist in skilled trades

In 1988, I made the move to Chicago to begin my HR career.

After growing up and earning my undergraduate degree in Iowa, studying abroad in Europe, and attending graduate school in Arizona, I was ready to return to the Midwest and begin life in the big city.

With youthful enthusiasm and fresh business degrees in my tool belt, I was eager to make my mark on the working world. Fortunately, I landed an HR role relatively quickly and started learning the ropes. One of my first challenges was hiring employees for manufacturing positions.

Back in those days, newspaper advertising was the primary way to get the word out. Our mid-sized, privately held organization relied on a combination of city, local, and ethnic publications to cast a wide net for qualified applicants. The compensation was competitive, the benefits generous, and the modern facility (“the shop”) was in a great location with free parking. Still, finding CNC operators, tool and die makers, assemblers, and welders was tough.

I quickly learned that many of our long-term employees were European immigrants who had come to Chicago decades earlier and were nearing retirement age — a major contributing factor to the recruiting issue at hand. But when I pursued local trade schools to try to connect with students looking for manufacturing experience, I found that many apprenticeship programs were being discontinued because of dwindling enrollments.

The administrators of these once vital pathways to respectable, well-paid career paths shared their frustrations with me. They pointed to the growing trend of high school counselors and parents encouraging all kids to attend college instead of learning a trade or pursuing a manufacturing career.

In the intervening years, many things have changed, but the shortage of applicants for manufacturing positions persists. According to a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal, the labor force participation rate among working-age men is currently 5% lower than in the 1980s. This equates to about 3.5 million fewer men between the ages of 25 and 54 in the workforce today. The statistics are more concerning for young men, many of whom are opting to play video games in their parents’ basements, day-trade, or rely on government assistance instead of seeking gainful employment.

As the leader of an employers’ association with a successful history supporting manufacturers, it pains me to see the long-standing hiring dilemma experience added hurdles. If the lack of young people choosing manufacturing wasn’t enough, the lack of young men opting to work in any industry is a double whammy.

While I would applaud the return of manufacturing to America, and Illinois specifically, I’m questioning from where the employees will come. Although advances in technology certainly will play a role and eliminate the need for some hiring, there are bound to be people shortages if the factors referenced above don’t change.

Today’s problem is certainly not new, and I’ll likely be retired before it’s resolved. I hope that through a combination of political, economic, educational and social changes, employers of the future won’t struggle with a similar shortage of applicants for positions required to ensure their organizations thrive.

• Mary Lynn Fayoumi is president and CEO of HR Source in Downers Grove.