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Employers: Qualified workers are hard to find
By Karl Henkel
Business is great for the team at Northern States Metals.
The company, on Youngstown’s West Side, designs and produces lightweight aluminum racks for solar panels, thought to be the future of green technology.
But there’s one problem, said Bernie Petro, chief engineer: Northern States Metals can’t find enough high-skilled workers for its ever-growing workload.
“There’s definitely a shortage of good engineers or just engineers,” said Petro, who looks primarily for mechanical and structural civil engineers to add to his current six-person team. “For a long time, students have not been going into the engineering field.”
His wish list isn’t just an engineer or two, either.
“We’ll easily double [our staff] over the next two years,” he said.
As Labor Day approaches, Petro’s story — and others like it — perplexes economic leaders, including Tom Waltermire of Team Northeast Ohio, a nonprofit JobsOhio economic development hub.
“It’s almost a crime that we have continuing high levels of unemployment when many manufacturers are crying out for people with the skills they need,” he said. “It’s frustrating to all of us.”
Waltermire would know; he’s chief executive at Team NEO and oversees business development, which has trended positively coming out of the recession. But the economy has come to a standstill — employers didn’t add any jobs in August — and Waltermire thinks a reason is lack of a skilled work force.
“People who have those skills are assets,” he said. “They will attract businesses and will consider expanding if they know they can get the people for what the expansion calls.”
Engineering jobs should be an easy sell — architecture and engineering occupations in the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman region earn an average of $61,090 annually, according to Occupational Employment Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — but it hasn’t attracted many into the field.
The shortage of engineering and skilled-trade workers has contributed to the Valley’s unemployment problem, according to local experts. They say good jobs are available, and while they may not be glamorous, they come with a steady paycheck.
Job seekers, however, must be willing to change their thinking.
HOW BAD IS IT?
The Mahoning Valley’s unemployment rate, hovered at about 13 percent throughout 2009, then dipped to about 11 percent last year before settling at about 10 percent this summer. It remains higher than national (9.2 percent) and state (8.8 percent) averages.
The unemployment rate could be worse than numbers indicate, since those for whom unemployment benefits have expired or those who are underemployed or who can only find part-time work to replace full-time jobs aren’t included in the unemployment rate.
Some local experts and business professionals say there may be an underlying reason as to why 10.3 percent of Valley residents are still unemployed.
Valley residents may not be undereducated, rather they are wrongly educated. That is, they are educated in highly-competitive fields, resulting in more difficulty finding work in fields that simply don’t need the same work force they did 10, 20 or even 30 years ago.
Bert Cene, executive director at the Mahoning and Columbiana Training Association, said a shift in career choices could be contributing to high unemployment.
“When the steel industry went down, the shift went from the high school kids working at the steel mills; they had to go to college,” Cene said. “Now we have a lot of college graduates and we need machinists and those with trade skills.”
PICK YOUR POISON
Trade skills generally have a shorter academic workload than four-year college degrees. For a time, particularly during the recession, trade schools became a viable alternative to universities.
Enrollment at New Castle School of Trades reached an all-time high of 700 last July, said Rex Spaulding, the school’s president. Now, as the economic climate slowly starts to improve, that number has dipped to 550.
Still, it represents a shift away from the traditional four-year degree.
“There’s no longer a stigma attached to being a trade- school student,” Spaulding said. “These are high-tech jobs now. There’s a certain technical level involved with [the] trade area.”
The opportunities, Spaulding said, are innumerable, especially in Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, thanks to the boon of the Marcellus and Utica shales. Plenty of jobs await trade-school graduates, he said.
“The potential for skilled trades workers is higher right now than it is for a college graduate,” Spaulding said, citing 350 truck-driving openings for work connected to the Marcellus Shale. Machinists, welders, auto mechanics, electricians and HVAC specialists are all in demand.
Certifications in these fields takes between six weeks and 15 months, and for those who have been unemployed for long stretches, it could serve as an immediate payoff.
“We see it a lot of the time: Our graduates are making more coming out of school than university students,” Spaulding said.
MAKING THE CHOICE
One of the top careers with the best job prospects is engineering, expected to grow 11 percent by 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook, which projects employment trends and changes during a 10-year period starting with 2008.
But engineering, despite the potential for industry growth and good pay, isn’t one of the top majors at Youngstown State University, which annually ranks its top five earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
At YSU, many have received degrees in flourishing fields, but others have elected to enter highly competitive lines of work like early-childhood education.
Criminal-justice degrees have appeared on the top five lists every year since 2002-2003 and most often lead to government jobs, whether with a local police force or the FBI. The problem: As many look to reel in government spending, that means fewer jobs and less pay.
But why are so many students still choosing these tough-to-land careers?
Leslie Ostick, 32, a junior education major at YSU, said she wants to become a teacher because she loves working with kids and fully understands that, at least initially, she won’t make a whole lot of money.
“I’ve tried other jobs where I made more money,” said Ostick, who previously worked in retail. “I just didn’t enjoy it. If I’m not satisfied, it’s just not worth it.”
Ostick’s situation is why Julie Felix, academic adviser at YSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, said students are not pushed or directed at particular majors or careers and said that’s a decision that should be made by each student.
“I don’t want a student in a program for the next four to five years if they don’t like it,” she said. “Odds are, I’ll see that student again in 10 to 15 years, because they don’t like what they’re doing with their career.”
Money also doesn’t appear to be a high priority for those entering college, Felix said, and it’s a trend that has shifted since she started her job at YSU seven years ago.
Others, like Breland Cockrell, a 19-year-old YSU sophomore, are changing majors. He recently switched from graphic design to engineering, and said his decision was mostly about money.
“Graphic designers make an average salary,” he said. “But engineers make around double that.”
It helped, too, that engineering was something that interested him.
Spaulding and Felix agreed students should be advised based on their interests and skill levels.
At YSU, some students have appeared to change their thinking.
More Class of 2010 students graduated with an accounting bachelor’s degree (6.2 percent) than any other degree. That industry is expected to grow by 11 percent by 2018.
Other good bets: biology or nursing (which made up 10.1 percent of YSU degrees in 2009-10). The health-care profession is expected to grow by 4 million; professional, science and technical service jobs by 2.7 million.
There are no absolutes, however. Demand for the growing industries today could differ significantly tomorrow.
“What looks good in one decade may flop during the next,” said Christina Hardy, career planning coordinator at the Career and Counseling Services Office at YSU. “We can’t really base decisions on the external environment, but we certainly have to incorporate that.”
But some, like Waltermire, said there needs to a bigger push for manufacturing-ready job seekers through job-training and other educational avenues.
“One of the best things we can do is help our manufacturing economy to grow is through promotion in the schools and through the development of programs through community colleges,” he said. “We need to drive programs that get more young people — and some of the older ones — with those kinds of capabilities.”
That’s easier said than done.
“If the motivation is not there to complete the required four years of schooling, that may be the biggest detriment,” Petro said. “Believe me, I direct as many students as I know personally or professionally into [engineering], but it’s very hard.”
Ultimately, job analysts believe there will be a correction in degrees of study, much like a correction in the markets.
“Does the economy settle in and give us the guidance on where to go?” Cene asked. “We’re trying to find the right mix of training to meet the needs of the employers.”