How do you move people to take on manufacturing jobs?

You know open positions exist in manufacturing companies. You know where the communities are with high unemployment rates. How do you connect the two?

Who would have thought a Spotted Cow could help to fill some holes in a theory about filling open manufacturing jobs?

I was enjoying a cold Spotted Cow from New Glarus Brewing Co. with my brother in Appleton, Wis., in early June when I asked him, “Would you ever move to this part of the world if you had the chance to get a better job with higher pay and more responsibility?”

Before he responded, I already knew the answer. He was in Wisconsin for three days of training on some new equipment that was going to be installed in the facility where he works in Louisiana. It was a sign of confidence that his employer thought him worthy of the advanced training. Maybe the employer might think him worthy of stepping beyond the hourly worker ranks and assuming a management position? Nah. That wasn’t going to happen. Most people in Louisiana don’t venture too far from home, and when they do, most of them end up coming home eventually. The pull of family, food, and football—not necessarily in that order—is hard to escape.

But it did get me to thinking about the lack of mobility that people have nowadays and how that is affecting the manufacturing industry’s ability to fill open jobs. (The U.S. Department of Labor suggests that there are nearly 6 million jobs open nationwide. Over the next decade, 3.4 million manufacturing jobs are expected to open up as baby boomers retire and the manufacturing sector expands, according to a 2015 study from the Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte LLC.) My brother has the means to pick up and move if someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, but that’s simply not the case for many people today. They are bound to a geographic location for myriad reasons:

• Spousal commitments. These aren’t the days of June Cleaver. The modern woman is more likely now than ever before in U.S. history to be educated and holding down a job. This era of two-income households means that two careers have to be considered when a potential move is tied to a job. Finding the right job is hard enough; a couple trying to find two jobs that are the right fit can be even more difficult.
• Family commitments. It’s no secret that a lot of marriages end in divorce. That also means that people have the chance to get remarried and possibly start another family. If all of this is occurring in a certain geographic area, the family roots that are created are hard to break. It makes the possibility of a move for a job all the more unlikely.
• Financial commitments. Many families are still upside down on mortgages or haven’t dug out of holes of debt. They simply can’t afford to make the move.

From a more local viewpoint, I just look around at the Chicagoland area and see the disconnect between opportunities and possible interested parties. Over the past several decades, plenty of manufacturing companies have joined the suburban migration with plenty of homeowners. They have moved to areas where the children are less likely to view manufacturing as a possible career path. Closer to the urban centers, people are clamoring for jobs that once were in their neighborhoods. Public transportation is available to take them to other parts of the city in an efficient manner, but most of the jobs in manufacturing tend to be in areas where public transportation is not mature. Trying to navigate suburb-to-suburb travel via bus can be an hours-long ordeal.

For those that think this urban example is rubbish, consider the plight in more rural areas, where many metal fabricators got their starts. Population growth in these areas is not robust, as people have migrated to larger metropolitan areas over the years in search of greater opportunities. Manufacturers in these areas are looking for the right workers as well.

Many manufacturers believe that a robust economic expansion—one that has been missing since the end of the Great Recession—could solve this issue, and they surely believe a business-friendly presidential administration and U.S. Congress could deliver that. More money in people’s pockets gives them more flexibility in making life-changing decisions, such as a major move.

Metal fabricators that aren’t sitting around waiting for things to get better are the ones that will benefit, however. These are the companies that are establishing relationships with community colleges, not just in their county but surrounding counties, and that are looking at flexible work schedules to accommodate transportation realities or at-home responsibilities. It takes a bit of planning, but even the smallest streams of talent are a huge plus for businesses in expansion mode. It’s going to take some creative thinking to get people to move into a manufacturing career.