Older Skilled Workers Are Aging Out of the Workforce

The mass retirement of skilled manufacturing workers is leaving employers frantic for new employees, a trend that is expected to sweep across the nation over the coming years. The industry's aging workforce is a result of the growing economy and the encroaching retirement of the baby boomer generation, and places such as New Hampshire's General Electric Aviation plants are already experiencing problems related to this trend.

From 2016 to 2021, roughly one-third of GE Aviation's workforce, nearly 800 workers, is expected to retire. The manufacturing company is the largest employer the New Hampshire town of Concord, and business operations leader Peter Hayley laments that finding a group of people with the proper skill set to replace the retiring manufacturing workers is not easy. Economic and Labor Market Information Bureau assistant director Katrina Evans adds that one of the problems they're facing while attempting to rebuild the worker pipeline is a lack of workers, not a lack of skill. The state of New Hampshire has an unemployment rate of just 2.8 percent, which is one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation. This keeps the pool of potential manufacturing worker replacements incredible low.

Despite the affordability of overseas labor, manufacturing jobs are still increasing in the United States. Nationally, 3.5 million manufacturing jobs might need to be filled over the next 10 years, and the lack of skilled workers mean that only 1.5 million of those are likely to be filled, according to a report from Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute. In New Hampshire, the number of manufacturing workers between ages 35 and 44 decreased by nearly 50 percent between 2004 and 2014, and nearly 60 percent of the industry's workers in the state are over 45.

This skills gap has already spurred New Hampshire community colleges to promote classes that teach manufacturing skills, such as tubing and machine operation, and businesses are trying to draw in more manufacturing workers by offering internships and part-time positions. Some companies are even targeting out-of-state workers, offering hiring incentives to help bolster the workforce.

While some experts believe the manufacturing skills gap might impact the growth of companies, others, such as economist Elise Gould of the Liberal-Leaning Economic Policy Institute, believe the skills gap is blown out of proportion. Whichever case may turn out to be true, states such as New Hampshire aren't taking any chances. Governor Maggie Hassan has already announced an initiative to join manufacturing companies and educators to help solve the skills gap problem.

Whether New Hampshire's issues of an aging workforce in manufacturing are to play out on a national level is still be up for debate. However, nobody can deny that the retirement of manufacturing workers of the baby boomer era is approaching, which is sure to change the nation's employment landscape.

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