The manufacturing skills gap. It seems you can鈥檛 go a week without a politician, media outlet or industry leader wringing their hands over this issue, perhaps because it鈥檚 just so confounding. In an industry that has yet to recover the jobs lost in the recession, we鈥檙e dealing with vacancies in the skilled trades that threaten to derail production growth and sector expansion.
According to Manpower Group鈥檚 latest 鈥淭alent Shortage Survey,鈥 skilled trades positions are the most difficult to fill, and have ranked #1 for the past four years. According to Manpower Group鈥檚 report: among the more than 1,000 U.S. employers surveyed, respondents say they are having difficulty filling open positions because candidates lack technical competencies/hard skills (48 percent); candidates lack workplace competencies/soft skills (33 percent) and because of a lack of/no available candidates (32 percent).