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Golden Member
Where Have All the Welders Gone?
By ILAN BRAT
The Wall Street Journal, via AP
(Aug. 15) - It's a great time to be a welder.
Months before he graduated from the four-year welding-engineering program at Ferris State University, in Big Rapids, Mich., 21-year-old Will Chemin had two offers for jobs paying $50,000-plus. The one he took, working in Dubuque, Iowa, for Deere & Co., the Moline, Ill., equipment company, pays $55,500 a year, plus a $2,500 signing bonus and full relocation coverage. "It takes off a lot of stress during the school year, that's for sure," Mr. Chemin says.
Welding, a dirty and dangerous job, has fallen out of favor over the past two decades, as young skilled laborers pursue cleaner, safer and less physically demanding work. Now, thanks to a global boom in industrial manufacturing, skilled welders are in greater demand than ever. Companies can't find enough of them.
The Hobart Institute of Welding Technology, in Troy, Ohio, has been inundated, on its Web site and in person, with recruiters. A notice from Liebherr Mining Equipment Co., offers full benefits and education subsidies. The Newport News, Va., company also is offering relocation assistance, something it hasn't done before, says Cort Rieser, vice president of manufacturing.
The company's Newport News plant, which builds 400-ton mining trucks, is running at capacity. "We've gone to all the overtime that everybody can handle," Mr. Rieser says. "I can't build any faster."
In Casper, Wyo., welders are so vital to J.W. Williams Inc.'s operations making dehydration and compression machinery for the oil and natural-gas industries that the company has begun offering $1-an-hour bonuses to welders who simply show up for work on time. "We need welders like a starving person needs food," says Hal Connor, the company's human-resources manager.
The welder shortage is part of a broader scarcity of skilled tradespeople affecting industries around the world. Ironworkers, machinists, sheet metalworkers, plumbers, pipe fitters and boilermakers are all in demand as production of industrial machinery continues near all-time levels. Some companies are having difficulties getting parts to build ships, bulldozers, rail cars, mining trucks and other industrial goods.
During a recent manufacturing conference in Chicago, Caterpillar Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Jim Owens said the paucity of welders and other skilled tradesmen was contributing to a production bottleneck at the Peoria, Ill., company. A spokesman says the problem is occurring in "pockets" and adds, "It has been an ongoing effort to recruit and train welders fairly quickly."
The ranks of welders, brazers and solderers - whose jobs all are essentially to join pieces of metal - dropped to 576,000 in 2005, a 10 percent decline compared with 2000, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The American Welding Society, an industry group, predicts that by 2010 demand for skilled welders may outstrip supply by about 200,000.
Welding is a job that isn't easy to automate. Repairs on the nation's aging infrastructure, such as bridges, require judgment calls a robot can't yet make. Some welded products, such as space frames for Formula One race cars, aren't produced in sufficient quantity to justify development of expensive robots.
The average age of welders, currently 54, keeps climbing. As a wave of retirements loom, welding schools and on-site training programs aren't pumping out replacements fast enough. As a result, many companies are going to great lengths to attract skilled welders, sending recruiters to faraway job fairs and dangling unprecedented perks.
http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/w...the-welders-gone/n20060815115409990008
By ILAN BRAT
The Wall Street Journal, via AP
(Aug. 15) - It's a great time to be a welder.
Months before he graduated from the four-year welding-engineering program at Ferris State University, in Big Rapids, Mich., 21-year-old Will Chemin had two offers for jobs paying $50,000-plus. The one he took, working in Dubuque, Iowa, for Deere & Co., the Moline, Ill., equipment company, pays $55,500 a year, plus a $2,500 signing bonus and full relocation coverage. "It takes off a lot of stress during the school year, that's for sure," Mr. Chemin says.
Welding, a dirty and dangerous job, has fallen out of favor over the past two decades, as young skilled laborers pursue cleaner, safer and less physically demanding work. Now, thanks to a global boom in industrial manufacturing, skilled welders are in greater demand than ever. Companies can't find enough of them.
The Hobart Institute of Welding Technology, in Troy, Ohio, has been inundated, on its Web site and in person, with recruiters. A notice from Liebherr Mining Equipment Co., offers full benefits and education subsidies. The Newport News, Va., company also is offering relocation assistance, something it hasn't done before, says Cort Rieser, vice president of manufacturing.
The company's Newport News plant, which builds 400-ton mining trucks, is running at capacity. "We've gone to all the overtime that everybody can handle," Mr. Rieser says. "I can't build any faster."
In Casper, Wyo., welders are so vital to J.W. Williams Inc.'s operations making dehydration and compression machinery for the oil and natural-gas industries that the company has begun offering $1-an-hour bonuses to welders who simply show up for work on time. "We need welders like a starving person needs food," says Hal Connor, the company's human-resources manager.
The welder shortage is part of a broader scarcity of skilled tradespeople affecting industries around the world. Ironworkers, machinists, sheet metalworkers, plumbers, pipe fitters and boilermakers are all in demand as production of industrial machinery continues near all-time levels. Some companies are having difficulties getting parts to build ships, bulldozers, rail cars, mining trucks and other industrial goods.
During a recent manufacturing conference in Chicago, Caterpillar Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Jim Owens said the paucity of welders and other skilled tradesmen was contributing to a production bottleneck at the Peoria, Ill., company. A spokesman says the problem is occurring in "pockets" and adds, "It has been an ongoing effort to recruit and train welders fairly quickly."
The ranks of welders, brazers and solderers - whose jobs all are essentially to join pieces of metal - dropped to 576,000 in 2005, a 10 percent decline compared with 2000, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The American Welding Society, an industry group, predicts that by 2010 demand for skilled welders may outstrip supply by about 200,000.
Welding is a job that isn't easy to automate. Repairs on the nation's aging infrastructure, such as bridges, require judgment calls a robot can't yet make. Some welded products, such as space frames for Formula One race cars, aren't produced in sufficient quantity to justify development of expensive robots.
The average age of welders, currently 54, keeps climbing. As a wave of retirements loom, welding schools and on-site training programs aren't pumping out replacements fast enough. As a result, many companies are going to great lengths to attract skilled welders, sending recruiters to faraway job fairs and dangling unprecedented perks.
http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/w...the-welders-gone/n20060815115409990008
