Why Factories Are Having Trouble Filling Nearly 400,000 Open Jobs

Remember Springfield, Ohio ("THEY'RE EATING THE DOGS! THEY'RE EATING THE CATS!)? The business owners there had to import Haitian workers because the local white people were lazy and drug addicted.

It worked well until Trump hand to insert his stubby orange sausage fingers into the situation.

The US also has a birth rate of near zero. Without immigrants, there will be no one to do all this manufacturing.

Hard to feel sorry for them.

R2, without immigration the US is a backwater

With or without immigration, the US is a backwater, courtesy of Trump, the Republican Party and MAGA.

Republicans also have tried their hardest to stymie tech/green energy jobs because they get lots of $$$ from oil and gas lobbyists. Let's keep embracing 19th century technology that's killing the planet so greedy Republicans can get even wealthier!

Maybe offer training and a living wage.

R7 - Gee, training, living wage and healthcare and retirement - stuff we took for granted and had a huge expanding middle class with people having children.

Immigration is NOT the solution. We can't keep taking in more people when there's a housing crisis and affordability problem.

They want immigrants because they will live sub-standard to Americans and get paid less - and they will send some of that money back to their home country.

The 'immigration is good for the economy' is bullshit when the economy is slanted to benefit the upper 1-5%. Until the economy uplifts everyone, immigration is a strain. It allows employers to do less and less for average workers.

[quote]“We spent three generations telling everybody that if they didn’t go to college, they are a loser,” he said. “Now we are paying for it. We still need people to use their hands.”

Yep. Now we have a glut of college educated, but non-experienced young people who think they're going to get a managerial role right out of the gate. With no work ethic. They think they're owed the kind of job, and perks, it took their parents a career to build, automatically.

We told 3 generations that if they didn't go to college they would be a loser? No we didn't.

Manufacturing jobs started to decline in the 70s and really went down hill in the 80s and 90s. The high-paying good jobs weren't AVAILABLE anymore.

I would have to guess that many of those 400,000 unfilled jobs (which I would question) are in nowheresville because the land was cheap and the local governments gave them tax breaks.

There's a limited local population and people aren't going to drive 1-1.5 hours each way - if they have a good car in the first place. And these jobs are NOT paying what they used to - they aren't great paying jobs, they're probably slightly more.

This sounds like a stat that isn't being explained or looked at fully. If the stat is actually true. Sounds like a way to justify immigrant workers in view of the Trump policies.

I watched a documentary episode on Youtube recently talking about this. It was outside of Pittsburgh. The person being interviewed worked at a steel plant as a foreman. He stated the entry level positions started at 70k and have amazing benefits. He went on to say there are no young candidates to replace them. When asked why he stated only few of the candidates had health concerns or things of that nature. It seems most young candidates didn’t want shifts over eight hours and did not want to work weekends due to interference with their personal lives.

[quote] It seems most young candidates didn’t want shifts over eight hours and did not want to work weekends due to interference with their personal lives.

As well they shouldn't. People didn't fight and die to unionize so that Mr. "No One Wants to Work Anymore!!" Boomer Factory Foreman can turn back the clock.

Again -- offer training, reasonable hours, and a living wage or STFU.

R9, not true. There are plenty of people without college degrees. They just don't want to work in factories

Republicans hate college educated people because most of them don't vote GOP

R8, the housing crisis is not due to immigrants

You guys all claim they're broke and on welfare but then accuse them of buying up all the houses

Maybe pay American factory workers a decent wage?

R2 I find that hard to believe. Every time I read about crime somewhere in the story there is a woman (usually the victim of the crime) who has five kids.

R14 - nobody said it was. We haven't built enough new housing in the past 15 years - there is a housing deficit that is raising prices.

Having more and more immigrants coming in to this situation makes it worse. And I never said they were buying up all the houses - I'm talking about plain old RENT.

And they ARE getting benefits that we have to pay for.

You're making up things that were never said because you have no real argument.

^ Immigrants are often the ones BUILDING those houses. Lots of immigrants work in construction or did you think that was all white people? Ask Trump about the undocumented workers he hired for construction projects

People like Trump and Vance blame immigrants for the housing crisis because they're racist. Even in areas with few immigrants, housing is expensive

Raise your pay

Time to get rid of those pesky child labor laws!

R18 - I'm not blaming immigrants for the housing crisis. It exists - and even with the immigrants in construction, there's not enough being built. So it doesn't matter that they work in construction - there's still not enough.

Adding more people to a housing crisis is only going to make it worse.

I'm not in support of what Trump is doing right now with ICE at all - but having more immigration is a temporary solution to a bigger structural problem. Immigrants - legal or illegal - are making the rich richer and it gets people out of their bad economy countries. It does not benefit the average American.

We need solutions to help average Americans already here - and there are tons who are struggling.

Once you remove the fake ads, you're down to 80k jobs.

Trump doesn’t care about trade. Trade is just the tool he’s using to sell his big tax cuts to himself to his MAGAs.

Tariffs are revenue to the federal government. The more revenue to the government, the more he can rationalize cutting taxes. On the ultra-rich.

Republicans to America: Want Medicaid? Get a factory job!!!

[quote] And employers cannot simply hire people right out of high school without providing specialized training programs to bring them up to speed

Which they don’t want to do.

Where are these languishing factories? Be specific. Show your work. Oh that’s right you can’t because it would show the enormous downsides to your pet theory.

^ okay now I did RTFA and it mentions a few places in Grand Rapids and Milwaukee so, not in East Bumfuck Alabama.

It also mentions voke high schools which I think depends on the parents to encourage that route in kids. My nephew had one attached to his regional high school that would’ve been good for him as he is not academically inclined. The kids who do it are already halfway to a decent job. I don’t think his (single parent, lots of issues) mother was even aware of it.

this article says half of the jobs require a college degree - they aren't just on the floor. And the greatest need is for technicians who can fix the machines - which requires 1-2 years of on the job training and education.

They don't mention the pay.

Oh - and the manufacturing boom is attributed to Biden. Jobs were created very quickly - so it takes some time to fill them.

Republicans need to pick a lane.

Do you want the current immigration 'system' to continue, so you can continue to exploit undocumented labor and also do performative tariffs and deportation exercises to please your dumb base?

Or do you want to do immigration reform, so you can fix all these 'birth rate' and 'no American want these jobs' problems you've manufactured, and maybe do the country - and specifically your base - some good by making manufacturing jobs 'good' jobs again? Yes you'd have to pay a living wage but let your beloved market help you with the supply and demand of labor and appropriate wages, which market may very well reward you by way of a healthier economy and consumers reacting well to having Made in America products available to them.

Or do you just really want to be able to continue to send jobs overseas, so you don't actually have to hire anyone or pay them a living wage? Of course you can continue to say the Democrats have overregulated so this is their fault and blame them when our whole freaking economy finally collapses due to oligarchy and the rich just never having enough.

Republicans, what exactly is your plan to Make America Great Again?

The rest of us need to stop playing into Republicans hands by taking seriously anything they say.

Zoning reform also can't happen fast enough.

Is it a living wage/union job? Nobody’s going to work in a factory for 10.00 bucks an hour.

There are plenty of great factory jobs in PA, Sylvia @ R12, as you well know. And there's plenty of on-the job training as well. If you aren't aware of that, you need to get out more.

And if they don't want to work on the weekends for 70K, that's on them. Sometimes, to get ahead, you just have to suck it up until you get more seniority. I mean did any of you ever work in a factory? I did (actually, in a meat-packing plant), my sisters did, my mother did, my grandparents did, et al -- all of them in PA. And my nephew and my ex-BIL currently do.

Hell, 70k is more than I ever made in a year, even after my M.A. + 42 credits toward my Ph.D. I'd have taken a 70K job (with no student loan debt!) in a heartbeat.

It's ultimately the employer's responsibility if people need to be educated or trained for a position.

If employers are 'not offering a path to get people educated or trained - with on-the job training, subsidized off-the-job training, advertising or supporting VocTech options, or offering a decent wage so that people undertake this themselves - they deserve to have no workers and ultimately go out of business.

A factory job seem mind numbing

A major reason why the US came out of the Covid economic stagnation much faster than other countries is because of undocumented immigrants. They spurred the economy by taking all the jobs Americans wouldn’t

"A factory job seem mind numbing."

You have obviously never worked in an office or as a call center representative.

There's a disconnect here. If a factory job pays a good wage people will put up with working on weekends, working thru a pandemic, and/or dealing with tediousness.

The factory work, like all lower income work, is almost impossible to sustain due to the work load. Why does no one mention that?

Factories and manufacturing plants are hiring half the employees they need to sustain production and then complaining when no one can last. Even illegals are too exhausted to handle the workload of a "40 hour (secretly 80 hour pushed on to one person) week"

When an employee craps out due to sheer exhaustion these companies just replace them with another expendable illegal. Now they can't do that anymore and may be forced to cut into their outrageous profit margins.

Profit margins for corporations have reached an all time high. Guess how that happens?

Here's how: break the law by hiring illegals or hiring overseas, dump two employees' worth of work on to one person, replace them when they quit or get fired due to exhaustion, replace them with another illegal who will work for pennies on the dollar, and you also get the added benefit of not having to pay benefits because few employees have enough seniority to qualify.

Wanna back that up, R37?

When I worked in the meat-packing plant, I had the highest paid (and most dangerous) of the "women's jobs," (yes that's the way it was back then), and I cut T-bone steaks all day with a band saw. I worked all day, and of course I had to hustle (as did all the women) but it's not like I had a quota. How was I made to do two people's jobs? You sound like you quoted that bullshit right out of a book -- or was it AI?

BTW, I could enlighten you boys about how much easier the "men's jobs" were (and how much more they got paid than the women did), but why should I bother? You won't believe me anyway.

I should post a poll to see how many of you have ever worked a FT factory job (that wasn't a summer job, or a job one of your rich friends/relatives got you in the factory head office). If any of you have, speak up, or forever hold your peace.

R38/Senior Lesbian, what makes you think no one would believe you? You've gotten plenty of support on DL, I've seen it myself. You really need to get rid of that chip on your shoulder.

If you have firsthand experience, fine. But why should the firsthand experience of the illegal workers who are the center of think pieces be any less credible? There have been articles where they speak about not being able to keep up the workload and injuring themselves or quitting due to exhaustion.

Because they are not paying them living wages.

With unions decimated, factory jobs aren't middle-class creating jobs any more

Gen Z doesn't want to work, unless it involves selfies and TikTok.

R42, no, all the previous generations overworked and ultimately lived shitty lives

Gen Z works, why do you think the unemployment rate is so low

I swear, people have been screaming "No one wants to work!" for the past 5000 years

If the jobs paid enough, people would want them.

R31 aren't you always posting about how financially hard up you are? Maybe YOU should move to Pennsylvania and take one of these factory jobs. I'm sure it would help your finances and I'm sure the men working there would just love having a bossy older lesbian barking orders around

As other posters have said, factory jobs used to be unionized. Housing was affordable. Mothers could stay home and raise "American" kids.

This will never happen again unless the wealthy are taxed as they were then. It allowed the middle class to drive consumerism.

Reagan changed all that.

And 70K a year in PA isn't a living wage? Please.

And yes, people got hurt at my meat packing plant job. I myself almost cut off my fingers with the band saw. Sometimes, the saw blade would hit the T-bone at an odd angle, and the whole piece of beef would flip around, taking your hand with it. But I got lucky -- the blade only took the fingertips off both my right hand gloves (the outer plastic and the inner cloth) and brushed against a fingernail, leaving the end jagged.

A woman in the next line cut ribeyes with a slicer like they have at the deli counter. She did cut off the end of one of her fingers, but they managed to reattach it.

Some factory work can be dangerous. But hey -- it's a job! And the economy was so bad in the early 80s I was grateful to have it.

BTW, mine was decidedly NOT a union job. Few factories were (except for the steel mills). That's why my mother busted her ass to get a "good union job" at the Hershey chocolate factory. She (at 85) still gets a $400/mo. pension.

R48 Nobody should have to bust their ass the way you did just because that's the way things were done back then.

Usually people want better conditions for the people who come after them. Apparently, not you.

Go shake your dick somewhere else.

Sure let the oligarchs blame Gen Z too for their problems. Again, wages.

Oh all the karma and reckonings happening now with the terrorizing of immigrants who are the backbone of our economy.

I’m a 2nd cook on a US flagged merchant vessel. I do the baking and wash the dishes. I work 6 months out of the year. I made 94k last year. I don’t pay anything for year round health insurance with a $350 deductible. These jobs are going begging. I’ve seen new hires quit after 3 days because they didn’t want to put their phone down and actually work.

R51 They're not supposed to be on their phones anyways when they are on the clock. Their are not supposed to even have one on their person. That's Federal regulation.

R34 - source for this claim or are you just putting down your own hopeful thoughts?

R52 and when the captain issued a verbal reprimand and quoted company policies, said captain was threatened with being thrown overboard . The Coast Guard took him away in irons.

I’ve worked factory jobs before- 12 hour rotating shifts and weekend OT. Not fun, but I was young and didn’t need much sleep.

One of the jobs was nothing but running a packing machine. That was boring, but the pay was good. This was in the early 90s.

Now, the pay is $5 more per hour with the same hot, loud and boring conditions. Wages haven’t gone up in 30 years, but the price of housing, groceries, transportation and insurance has skyrocketed.

Maybe fucking PAY the people doing the WORK instead of giving more bonuses to managers who can’t fucking DO the job or the fuckwits in corporate who butch that can’t find anyone to work?

$5 more an hour is an increase in wages though R55.

Not as much as bonuses went up, though.

The C suite set needs to be brought down to earth. Or they’ll end up out of jobs, too.

Crazy how these huge corporations are all so caught up in the low effort rent-seeking/private equity game, and how easy we've made it to profit from it.

[quote]The US also has a birth rate of near zero. Without immigrants, there will be no one to do all this manufacturing.

Don't worry. Once we get the girls back in the kitchen, stripped of individual rights and no birth control, the babies will come.

R54 Tell me more. I work with any number of District Admirals on a regular basis.

R60. I’d rather not, shipping is a very small world. Dude would have been a hero though everybody hates that captain . Who hates me, I’ve had occasions to go to union about his BS and he had to back down.

Slaves, child labor, undocumented immigrants ... capitalism requires that people be exploited so the rich get theirs.

R61 Do you think the Jones Act has long to live?

Maybe the corporations should stop fucking over workers. Stop giving shitty 3% raises while executives take home millions. To all corporate CEOs- FUCK YOU

I don't care what big business wants. It certainly isn't looking after me.

R63 yes, it will. For now. Trump won’t get rid of it. I freely admit I am a beneficiary of tariffs and protectionist legislation. I make more in a day than a 3rd works sailor doing my same job makes in a month. I am fact probably among the 20 highest paid people on the planet doing my job.

I lived in a very depressed county in NC. The few manufacturing jobs that we have are not only inaccessible to people who don't have a vehicle as they are out in very rural areas, they also only hire thru temp agencies that barely pay over minimum wage for backbreaking labor. It's bullshit so nobody even bothers with it.