Why aren’t Americans filling the manufacturing jobs we already have?
https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2025/05/13/g-s1-66112/why-arent-americans-filling-the-manufacturing-jobs-we-already-have
by zsreport
Why aren’t Americans filling the manufacturing jobs we already have?
https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2025/05/13/g-s1-66112/why-arent-americans-filling-the-manufacturing-jobs-we-already-have
by zsreport
28 comments
More products, more trucks, more eco system destruction… as Mother Earth is collapsing in real time.
Let’s get back to basics….
Laziness.
The article is more about the lack of preparation of the workforce, but does reference the poor pay and difficult work. If you rely on people to invest in the skills to make your products before you start to pay them low pay, why not require them to buy you the machines and tools as well? It’s not like we have full employment and they can get jobs that pay better with paid training and OJT.
What jobs are sitting vacant? I keep hearing what a bad job market it is. There aren’t jobs.
One in five jobs advertised online don’t exist.
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/ghost-jobs-2c0dcd4e
40% of employers admitted in a survey they posted a fake job listing
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/27/4-in-10-companies-say-theyve-posted-a-fake-job-this-year-what-that-means.html
Some scammers & spammers create fake job listings just to harvest your data
Cause working in a factory sucks
Vietnam India China and most industrialized countries give free College or Vocational Program. If you want to start manufacturing, make Education free.
We need to ensure our existing manufacturers like Wolfspeed stay in business first.
Almost always its because the pay offered in the listing is inadequate and that is if its even real. The good paying positions get flooded with applications.
Worked in a factory…it sucked. Could have been great…but low pay and hostile management made it a shitty job.
Anyone that asks this question has never worked a job in manufacturing. Even a white collar position at a manufacturer sucks.
I’ve worked in a small manufacturing business for 20 years. People, particularly after 2020, don’t want to work in factories. They want to be YouTube creators/influencers or sit at a desk job. My company also pays 1/3 above market wages, so it’s not all about pay.
Economic uncertainty.
I work in a factory. I drive a forklift. Spent time on the safety committee. It’s union. Pay is pretty good. But it sucks. It’s a soul sucking shit show that’s full of broken worn out equipment and broken worn out people. 401k is iffy. Pension is long gone. Injuries are abundant. A lot of fingers getting smashed. A couple of broken legs. A forearm fracture. No climate control in the summer. Upper level management may have experience from when some of them were on the floor, but by and large it’s just a huge kakistocracy. It’s not fun. I’ve called the suicide hotline several times since I started.
That’s why no one wants to…..
Saw a post on Reddit for a concrete manufacturer here with job openings. Paid $16 for production and forklift driver. That’s $33k a year. That why people dont work there. You can’t raise a family on $33k as a man.
good post. there’s been a couple of media stories like this, including from TV’s “dirty jobs” guy. My take (as a Floridian)
1. High rates of dropouts/fewer high school diplomas
2. you can make as much as a barista or bartender or uber driver as you can on most factory floors.
3. past criminal record makes it impossible to work in any capacity with pharmaceuticals, credit card numbers, where minors are present, or as a first responder.
4. too easy to get benefits if you’re an able bodied adult. I know of someone right around the block who hasn’t’ worked in 4 years. He got his therapist to sign a document saying he has PTSD. But he’s not a veteran, ex police or anything. He was a clothing salesperson.
Yea I worked in a factory ten years ago…. they’re hiring the position I worked for lower then what I was paid then.
*NobODy WAnTs tO WoRK aNYmORe*
Becuase they longer provide a decent wage. I make $20/hr for a job that probably was enough to support a family and have a house 15 years ago.
Because the vast majority of manufacturing jobs suck overall. They tend to come with significant health and safety concerns, high physical demand, poor hours, poor management, lack of appreciation, high pressure, bad cultures, and low stability, all while paying the absolute minimum possible.
The dominant corporate culture that has taken hold ensures that efficiency gains pad profits while doing little to improve worker quality of life and are often a direct threat to people’s jobs. It is a constant game of trying to squeeze every penny out of people until they are ultimately disabled and replaced. The constant pressure to do more is an oppressive force lingering over the entire production floor. The palpable air that you are low skilled disposable labor permeates the environment. The lack of future career prospects are demoralizing.
The reality is, if you are going into manufacturing but don’t have ambitions towards management, then you can be relatively certain that you will live and die poor. Where is the incentive for me to spend my life in a manufacturing job refining some specialized process skill when my pay ceiling is trash, I’m constantly seen as disposable, nothing I ever do will be good or fast enough, and the skills I refine are only narrowly translatable to other companies with similar prospects.
Nobody wants to pay the bottomline costs that would be necessary to fix these problems. We’ve allowed exploitation of cheap labor to become a necessity and more often than not, the people championing the return of manufacturing are actively opposed to the changes necessary to make it viable.
Minimum lifestyle expectations in the USA preclude it
Low key a big reason is factories disproportionately are where the land is cheap.
People don’t want to live where the land is cheap (which is why the land is cheap)
The issue with working in a paper mill or something is just as much about the fact the job is in Madawaska ME 4 hours from anywhere than any problems with the job
My take (in order of importance):
1) Pay. Pay. Pay.
2) Drug tests (there’s a non-insignificant portion of the population that can’t pass one…and they’re not getting hired in manufacturing…). That’s something like 20% of the US population…but a large chunk of that population are the people for whom manufacturing could be their path up and those folks are disproportionately the types of people that manufacturers would hire…so you’ve probably reduced your candidate pool by more like 30-40%!
3) Inflexibility (primarily on schedules, but in general), especially due to #1. You can pay folks enough to afford childcare or you can pay them enough for their MIL to take the kids, but she has pilates at 3P on wednesdays and isn’t willing to give that up and you have to pick the kids up by then. Or you could pay them enough to be a sole provider in a family and have a non-working partner…but that’s usually even more than childcare is. 40% of the adult population have kids under 18…and when you exclude retirees…that number is even higher!
4) Benefits (mostly things like childcare, but also things like being able to take off for childcare emergencies, etc. – even if that’s unpaid)
5) Background checks – 1/3 of the US population has a record of some sort. 1/12 has a felony conviction, 1/6 has a misdemeanor conviction (the rest has an arrest record without conviction….but that’s still a problem for some employers)
6) Education – lack of relevant education, both formal and on-the-job. But also unwillingness to train or relax job requirements to be minimum relevant instead of ideal
7) Not promoting jobs to the right people (getting entry-level talent to apply generally requires more than just posting on linkedin)
Because there are other, better jobs?
I worked in a factory for minimum wage for a hot minute back in the late 80s and it sucked so hard I quit after two weeks. I honestly would rather dig ditches
Usually jobs people don’t want are the ones that don’t pay enough for person to live on that income. Nobody wants to work full time and still not be secure.
Not gonna lie–in my area everyone who wants to be working is already working. I just don’t think there are enough people
I don’t know what rust belt manufacturing looks like, but I have a lot of years in red state, non-union manufacturing. We pay people $18/hour, bring them on as “temp to hire,” so for the first 90 days (*at least!*) they don’t get any PTO, 401k, or company healthcare plan (they the shittiest plan on earth through the temp agency instead). They can be let go or not hired on for any reason, with zero notice. My company starts new hires (post temp period) out with 3 weeks PTO, which is actually really high for the area. Most around here start people out with 0 or maybe 1 week off the first year or 2. In the bigger plants, new hires get put on off shift (2nd, 3rd, or weekend, depending) and it can take *years* to get a day shift position. When times are good, overtime is mandatory. Leading up to COVID, my father in law was working mandatory 7 days for 2 years and had to use PTO to spend a Sunday with his grandkids. At my last plant, they had mandatory 10 hour days during the week and 5 hours on Saturday (starting at 5:00 am).
When times are bad, reduced hours, furloughs, and layoffs are always around the corner. Right now my father in law’s industry (automotive) is in the shitter, so his plant has laid off 2nd and 3rd shift and 1st is working 32 hours, so his paychecks are absolute ass right now.
During the immediate post-Covid “great resignation” period, my job at the time raised their starting pay to $16/hr because we were losing people to KFC down the road who paid $16/hr and had more flexibility.
Long story short, a lot of these manufacturing jobs are *not* “good jobs.” Every production worker I’ve ever met wants their kids to go to college or at least a highly skilled trade (welding, electrician, etc.) and not get stuck doing what they’re doing. The idea that every manufacturing job is making $50/hour at Ford working exactly 40 hours with union benefits is dumb boomer false nostalgia.
Union manufacturing jobs that pay well have no trouble filling positions
This is anecdotal but I work ive worked at a manufacturing plant for 12 years. It’s very difficult to keep people around. Especially when they are “easier” jobs, or really less physically labor required that pay 90% or more of what they are getting in a factory.
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