quarter, followed by legislative/regulatory pressure at 44% and oil/energy prices at 33%,” said Bono. PwC’s Manufacturing Barometer is a quarterly survey of US-based executives in large, multinational industrial manu- facturing businesses.
BCG: No US Workforce Shortage I
n a report that contradicted findings by other organizations, the Boston Consulting Group on Oct. 15 announced that it
had found “no evidence of a high-skilled labor gap nationwide.” BCG estimated that the US manufacturing sector is short “only 80,000 to 100,000 workers,” which represents less than 1% of the 12 million workers that the government classifies as working in manufacturing.
The report contradicts a 2011 study by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute, which concluded that as many as 600,000 manufacturing jobs, or about 5% of those in the
sector, are going unfilled. While that report was based on a nationally representative survey of manufacturers, BCG used a different methodology.
BCG said it “looked at localities where wage growth has
exceeded inflation by at least three percentage points annually for five years. Wage growth is a widely accepted indicator of skills shortages in other sectors, such as energy; it reveals where employers have been forced to bid up pay to attract hard-to-find workers.”
By that measure, BCG further concluded: • “Only seven states ... show significant or severe skills gaps.” Those were identified as Alaska, New Mexico and Wyoming, Alabama, Nevada, Montana and Hawaii.
• “Trying to hire high-skilled workers at rock-bottom rates is not a skills gap.”
• Workforce “shortages are local, not national, in nature and reflect imbalances driven by both location and job classes.”
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