Skilled Manual Labor Critical To US STEM Dominance

Doofus writes: "The Wall Street Journal has an eye-catching headline: Welders Make $150,000? Bring Back Shop Class. Quoting: 'According to the 2011 Skills Gap Survey by the Manufacturing Institute, about 600,000 manufacturing jobs are unfilled nationally because employers can't find qualified workers. To help produce a new generation of welders, pipe-fitters, electricians, carpenters, machinists and other skilled tradesmen, high schools should introduce students to the pleasure and pride they can take in making and building things in shop class. American employers are so yearning to motivate young people to work in manufacturing and the skilled trades that many are willing to pay to train and recruit future laborers. CEO Karen Wright of Ariel Corp. in Mount Vernon, Ohio, recently announced that the manufacturer of gas compressors is donating $1 million to the Knox County Career Center to update the center's computer-integrated manufacturing equipment, so students can train on the same machines used in Ariel's operations.' How many of us liked shop? How many young people should be training for skilled manufacturing and service jobs rather than getting history or political science degrees?"

Comments

Can't find welders?

[jandrese]

Given the number of fabrication shops that have closed or gone overseas and laid off welders in the past two decades, I find it highly suspicious that companies can't find people to fill their positions. Is this like the H1B "crisis" where Silicon Valley firms can't find tech workers anywhere locally, but it turns out they're asking for DBA administrators with 15 years of experience on 5 different platforms plus 10 years coding experience with 8 different languages and can sysadmin server clusters that are willing to start people at $40k/year? I mean yeah, that guy in India said he could do it at that price, why can't we bring him over here?