More leading manufacturing executives today believe the lack of skilled labor and management skills in the work force—not current oil prices or the weak U.S. dollar—most hurts the growth of America’s economy.
In a new poll conducted by sponsors of the FABTECH International & AWS Welding Show, 27 percent of the executives cited the lack of employee skills as the leading obstacle to growth. Ranked second was oil prices (cited by 20 percent), followed by tax policies (11 percent), weak U.S. dollar (10 percent), the financial commitment in Iraq (9 percent) and the credit crisis (7 percent).
“In many respects, this finding is not surprising as we have heard for many months from leaders in the metal forming, fabricating and welding industries that their biggest challenge today is finding skilled workers, especially young people, who can tackle the increasingly sophisticated tasks required in manufacturing today,” said John Catalano, show manager at Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), one of the event’s sponsors.
Source: Plant Engineering
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