Boomers—OK as potential job candidates in manufacturing industry

Retirees, even from outside manufacturing, might be good candidates to fill select roles at metal fabricating companies. RainStar/E+

Celebrating a lot of retirements at your work? It’s not surprising. A majority of U.S. citizens are getting to that point.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2017 National Population Projections, all baby boomers will have reached the age of 65 by 2030. At that time, it is estimated that one in every five U.S. residents will be retirement age.

By 2034, 77 million people will be 65 years and older. Simultaneously, the Census Bureau estimated that there will be only 76.5 million people under the age of 18.

This might start to sound like some sort of warning about a population catastrophe awaiting the U.S., but it’s not. This is a tale of opportunity for metal fabricating companies.

I wrote in an editorial last year for The FABRICATOR about how shops could do themselves a favor by hanging on to their older workers as long as they can. This might be considered an addendum to that column. If a metal fabricator finds success with keeping their own potential retirees in the fold, won’t it find success with other retirees, even those without significant manufacturing experience?

The fact that metal fabricating companies continue to struggle to find the right workers for job openings is no secret. Those interviewed for the August 2023 issue’s “What keeps you up at night?” story shared those concerns, but they didn’t really dwell on them either. If you are in the metal fabricating business, you are used to overcoming challenges, so figuring out how to find a new generation of manufacturing talent is just another problem to solve.

Chad Huff, president, H&H Metals, Thornton, Colo., has about 20 people working for him, and at the time that we talked for the “What keeps you up at night?” story in early August, he was in the process of adding two full-time workers. He also had two interns from the local welding school.

But it was in the area of part-time workers that he had something unusual to share. He had posted job openings on online boards and actually got interest from retirees who had never really spent a great deal of time in fab shops.

“These people are kind of an untapped resource,” Huff said. “What we’ve found, especially with our part-timers, is that these people who have retired are bored at home. They’re looking for a purpose and something to do.”

In particular, Huff described a former accountant that came to work for H&H Metals. This person was a partner in his firm and had very large clients, but was looking for something more out of life than just cutting his yard, Huff said.

Realizing that this person was meticulous and not afraid to take on large-scale projects, Huff put him in charge of robotic welding for one of the company’s high-volume product lines. “He’s awesome at it,” Huff said.

Another part-time worker, who used to work at a brewery, handles orders in the front office. He’s been doing that for seven years.

“He loves it, and it’s great for us,” Huff said.

The best part of this type of arrangement is that metal fabricators for the most part have turned their attention away from trying to find job applicants with the perfect technical skills to seeking out people with a solid work ethic, a desire to learn, and the ability to show up promptly for the start of a shift. Technical skills can be taught, and in some instances, fabricating technology has progressed so that a person can be trained to run a machine in a matter of days, instead of weeks.

Obviously, a company would like to hire young people who can be trained and work full time, possibly even seeking out overtime as it becomes available. That’s a noteworthy goal in terms of human resources efforts. In the meantime, retirees might be the key for a shop looking to respond to new job opportunities and growing the business.

Of course, the company might have to make adjustments to job descriptions calling for changes to certain physical job requirements, such as having the ability to lift 100 lbs., and be a bit more flexible with schedules, allowing frequent visits to the doctor, but those are small tradeoffs. The pool of retirees is a large one, and they are prime candidates to help out metal fabricating companies. You’ll definitely be OK with these boomers.