Manufacturing Labor Shortage

I’ve been seeing a few articles here and there about labor shortage or people not wanting to work. Today’s post will be a short post on the manufacturing labor shortage. CNN Business has a good short article on this.

““We have a perception problem. People don’t know the jobs are here or that these are jobs they want,” Carolyn Lee, executive director of The Manufacturing Institute”

“American factories are desperate for workers. It’s a $1 trillion problem.”, CNN Business, Matt Egan, May 4, 2021.

You don’t say.

I hope it’s not a surprise. After almost 50 years of warring with unions, offshoring to foreign countries and, the latest, bringing in robots, people firmly believe that manufacturing firms do not like American laborers because they are too expensive. The preference of American business has been shareholders to the exclusion of everyone else.

You might have to raise wages, but even then, the youths may not believe you after roughly 50 years. That’s a long time to do war against the American worker, forcing them to take lower and lower wages.

Hopefully, the plight of the manufacturing sector will serve as a warning to other industries, but as long as the shareholders hold primacy over everyone else, I don’t see the situation improving soon. Get rid of the primacy of the shareholders and raise wages, then maybe the American workers will start to believe in corporation.

Until then, they have every reason to distrust manufacturers.