Word Count: 653
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Key Take Away: The labor shortage is far from over. How far, you ask?
Ridiculous, right?
There are plenty of unemployed people. Even though the unemployment rate in August 2023 is 3.8%, that amounts to roughly 6,000,000 people without a job.
Even though the open jobs rate slightly edged down, there are still roughly 8,800,000 open jobs in the US. This data is taken from the JOLTS report (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, which is produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
That means if every one of those 6,000,000 unemployed people were hired tomorrow, there would still be 2,800,000 jobs that won’t be filled because we don’t have enough people.
Some say that the labor shortage is not as bad as it once was. That may be true to a degree.
At one point, last year, the JOLTS report said there were literally twice as many open jobs as people who were unemployed.
Has the labor shortage gotten better?
If you don’t have any open positions you need to fill, you might answer yes. If you are struggling to fill open jobs, you might say now.
Last week, in September 2023, a Community College in Alabama had a job fair. Alabama has a lot of manufacturing, and it continues to grow as a place more companies expand their plants and are opening new operations. This reflects much of the trends in the southeast.
If you think about the typical Community College student, they are motivated to get ahead. Many are adult learners. Many of those adult learners are taking classes so they can boost their earnings. Should be a great place to land some terrific new employees, isn’t it?
At the job fair, there were 20 companies with jobs they urgently needed to fill. Those two companies sent 35 people to handle the booths and meet with perspective employees. These companies were ready to rock.
The doors opened and they expected an onslaught of potential job applicants.
Across the entire day, a grand total of 12 people showed up to explore the opportunities. Twelve! That is not a typo. Twelve potential employees.
What’s the point?
First and foremost, although the pundits have stopped talking about the labor shortage, it continues. Ignoring the labor shortage won’t make it go away.
Remember, the labor shortage is slated to continue growing until 2030. That means at least 7 more years of this.
If you are growing increasingly weary of trying to find and retain qualified machine operators for your CNC machines, we have a proven and cost-effective solution for you. A purpose-built, CNC machine-tending robot from RoboJob-USA solves the issue.
You’ll have the robot for 15 to 20 years. That means you won’t have to replace it any time soon because of obsolesce. That also means you’ll be running jobs for 15 to 20 years without labor costs for that machine operator.
Yes, it provides a hedge against wage and benefit inflation.
But the real advantage to these robots is something that not many people talk about. Over the lifetime of the robot, machine shop leaders are getting back 6 or 7 times the amount they invested in labor savings.
If you could hire a machine operator and have them work for you for 15 or 20 years, and only pay them for three years of labor, how many machine operators would you hire?
Not only are these numbers very real, but our customer base also validates them all the time. That is why they come back and buy more robots from us.
We are also getting a fair number of inquiries from machine shop leaders who purchased another brand of robot and realized that wasn’t the optimal choice.
If you want to do everything possible to ensure the success of your machining operation, adding a purpose-built, CNC machine-tending robot is a powerful choice. It is one that will continue to pay dividends for your operation.