Poll: Teens Turn Thumbs Down on Manufacturing Career

Results reinforce need to showcase quest for highly skilled workers in trades, on factory floor

(FMA: Rockford, IL) -- Despite assertions from manufacturers that they will need a new breed of highly skilled workers in the years ahead and job opportunities will abound for today’s youth, U.S. teenagers in large numbers want to wear white collars, not blue, when they launch their careers.

A new national poll shows a majority of teens (52%) have little or no interest in a manufacturing career and another 21 percent are ambivalent. When asked why, a whopping 61 percent say they seek a professional career, far surpassing other issues such as pay (17%), career growth (15%) and physical work (14%).

“Unfortunately, manufacturing often is not positioned as a viable career by groups such as educators and counselors, and at times factory work even is maligned in pop culture and the media,” says Gerald Shankel, president of Nuts, Bolts & Thingamajigs (NBT), The Foundation of the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association Intl., which sponsored the poll. “Based on this environment, these findings are not surprising.

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Why would anyone expect a teen to consider a job that will no longer exist in 5 or 10 years? The manufacturing base of the US has declined and we have become a service economy. There are plenty of blue collar workers that are looking for work now because of jobs that have been shipped overseas. These people are skilled but the jobs no longer exist here. You want to add more people to this workforce?

Pittsburgh, Detroit, Flint, and lots of other cities that were once the manufacturing hubs of the US now have record unemployment. Where are all these manufacturers that are looking for workers? Why don't they relocate to where the labor is?

Kids see their parents bust their humps to be laid off one or two years short of a pension. They have seen plenty of lean times while Mom and Dad were on temporary or permanent work furloughs. These kids have it right - get an education and a white collar career and you will have a much better chance of weathering the frequent storms of our economy.