The current talent gap in manufacturing is a well-known obstacle in shops large and small throughout the U.S. A recent study highlights this gap on a state-by-state basis.
The study from ECI Software Solutions found that 48 out of 50 states had a shortage of demand for manufacturing jobs. Only Texas and Louisiana had a surplus.
To reach these and other conclusions, ECI used data from LinkedIn to get the number of jobs available for manufacturing-related roles in each state. It then compared this with data from Google Keyword Planner to see how many people in each state were searching for these jobs. The data is from January.
ECI’s research tracks with a study by the Manufacturing Institute, which found that by 2030 manufacturers will need to fill an extra 4 million jobs—more than half (2.1 million) of which are expected to remain unfilled.
In ECI’s study, it found that the biggest shortage in demand was in Wyoming, with a 90% gap between jobs on the market and search demand for said jobs. Another way to view the study results—or better understand how that 90% figure was reached—is that there were 190 total manufacturing jobs available but only 20 total searches for those jobs.
Wyoming was followed in this manufacturing-jobs-demand deficit by New Jersey (86%), Wisconsin (76%), Iowa (72%) and Kentucky (70%).
Only New York was close to equilibrium: the Empire State had 1,600 total job searches and 1,610 jobs available.
On the other hand, there was a job-demand surplus of 52% in Louisiana, where there were 820 job searches for 541 positions, and the surplus was 9% in Texas, where there were 3,760 job searches against 3,460 positions available.
Nationwide, there’s a 50% deficit in demand for the manufacturing jobs that are available. The full study can be seen here. ECI, which provides enterprise resource planning software, suggests that manufacturers can use the tool to better utilize their resources.
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