One of the frustrations for people in the mental health field is that most treatments for mental illness tend to break out like this:
- One third of the patients get better.
- One third get worse.
- One third stay the same.
You can say this in a happy way, like, “One third of patients treated with talk therapy find that their conditions improve!” You can also go with the pessimistic version: “Two thirds of patients treated with talk therapy show no improvement.” Or even worse, “One third of patients treated with talk therapy find that symptoms worsen after treatment.”
A recent study on the Skills Gap — the lack of people trained adequately for jobs in manufacturing, where the need for skilled workers is growing — comes up with similar numbers.
One third of the respondents to the new PwC/Manufacturing Institute survey say that they’re not having trouble finding qualified workers. That means that two thirds of the respondents are. In fact, nearly half said they’re having a lot of trouble finding qualified people. Only 13% say they can easily find qualified candidates for jobs in advanced areas like IIoT, virtual or augmented reality, robotics, and 3-D manufacturing.
Figures from the U.S. government Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) confirm the problem, showing 388,000 openings in manufacturing but only 294,000 hires. That’s much worse than other industries.
When asked whether they think things are getting better or worse when it comes to finding qualified people, respondents were fairly evenly divided on the question as it was presented, with every option within 5 points of 30%.
- 31% say the Skills Gap is not bad now but will get worse.
- 26% think the Skills Gap has peaked and things will improve in the future.
- 29% say it’s bad now and will get worse.
But look deeper, and it’s still a fairly pessimistic picture. That’s a bit less than a third saying the Skills Gap is not a current problem; more than half think that it is. And it’s just about one quarter saying they think things are getting better, with fully 60% expecting things to get worse.
We don’t know how things will end up, but we know that when you need support for your Rexroth electric motion control — drives, power supply modules, servos and controls — you probably don’t have those skills in house. Fortunately, we can be your specialists. We can answer your questions when you call (479) 422-0390, and we can fly out to you if that’s what you need.