Educated Welders: The Real Employment Issue Industry needs to transform how it educates its workforce in order to meet long-term goals and to maintain a competitive edge on the world stage The welding industry’s employment landscape continues to change rapidly. With shifts and more sophistication in education and technology, the welders required in today’s workforce differ greatly from those desired even 15 to 25 years ago. The biggest challenge, as employers have found over the past few years, is finding the right kind of welders to do the work they need to have done. We used to be able to train welders quickly and simply. We taught them how to weld, and that was good enough to become employed. You could easily get a job that way. Welding has matured into an industry with increased automation, advanced equipment, and higher levels of required documentation and accountability related to quality control and code compliance. As a result, there is more specialization and a greater need for welders who understand more than how to hold a torch and join metal. That’s one challenge. The second challenge is that of the shrinking welding workforce in comparison to the growing number of jobs available. Into the 1980s, according to figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of welders in the United States reached 550,000. By 2013, that number had plummeted to 343,000. Recent bureau projections say the number of welding jobs will increase by 6% by 2022. However, the American Welding Society predicts an even larger increase in available jobs, saying the field could grow as much as 10%. The industry is facing a talent shortage — something that is widespread across the United States. In fact, Manpower Group’s annual Talent Shortage Survey, released in mid-May, reveals that 32% of U.S. employers report difficulties filling open positions because of talent shortages, with skilled trade vacancies remaining in the No. 1 position as “hardest to fill.” And while it’s a decrease of 8% over last year’s figure of 40%, talent shortages do have an impact on business operations. How do you solve the problem of finding welders who are trained to meet the demands of employers striving to remain globally competitive? How do you fill the growing number of open jobs when the workforce has shrunk considerably over the past 30 years? You need to break down the disconnect between employers, education, and prospective employees as well as the ongoing confusion between a trained welder and an educated one. They are completely different things. Shaping an Educated Welder We have to start thinking of welding as a maturing, changing market. We are seeing higher levels of specialization, not only in equipment, but in applications, and even more exotic materials, such as the increase in aluminum and advanced-high-strength steels. I liken this change to the shift in agriculture. Years ago, most people learned how to farm on the job, from relatives. It was a skill handed down and picked up through hands-on work in the field. In fact, when colleges were formed through the Morrill Land- Grant Acts in 1862 and 1890, there were only a couple of agriculture degrees available. By the 1960s, the industry, as one that produced educated farmers as opposed to trained farmers, was changing. The science behind agriculture was new. To meet the needs of the industry, agricultural education changed in the 1990s to address new specializations and has since grown dramatically. Now, when you review the technological advances in agriculture and how the industry has expanded, you realize how many different degrees are available in this area. There’s animal husbandry, agronomy, horticulture, forestry, plant genetics, aquatics, conservation. The point is agriculture has become a specialized field of study and employment, and those entering the industry need a much broader knowledge base than they did prior to even the 1980s. Welding, and even broader career and technical education (CTE), are moving along this same evolutionary path when it comes to specialization 34 WELDING JOURNAL / SEPTEMBER 2015 BY JASON SCALES
Welding Journal | September 2015
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