Discretionary Spending and Skilled Machinists

That's a real shame , There is such a shortage of skilled machinists, Tool & die makers. Most jobs are being filled my immigrants and there not enough of them. Apprenticeship programs are almost nonexistent. I don't understand it myself. We should be encouraging growth in this field.

Jim C

Any data on the job market for machinists? Will the demand decline as our manufacturing base continues to erode? Kind of a chicken and egg thing, don't you think?

Manufacturing is coming back, with todays JIT delivery, China can't meet these demands, Plus there not that good at making good products. There is a trend that companies are bringing of the "outsourcing" back to the US

Jim C

http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/327776

Milo

Milo, Thanks for the info, This is very troubling. As I said in my 1st post it is a shame this is happening, No easy answer, Politics our schools, and our own industry does not promote training, Our local trade school has only a handful enrolling in their machine shop training program and many schools are dropping their programs altogether

Jim C

The Guidance counselors at the students "home high schools" are disuading students from leaving the "home high school" to go to the vocational school because the tax monies allotted to the student then go to the vocational school.

So they give bad advice based on their school systems goal of retaining tax monies rather than actually giving good guidance to students.

It will be years before most 'college" students have paid back, let alone earned any additional value of their investment in 4 years of college.

Follow the money!

Milo

100 years ago there were no schools for machinists. If you wanted to be a machinist you started as an apprentice and spent several years doing that at an appropriate pay scale. I'd like to hear why we don't do that today. I have some suspicions .........

1. Machine shops owners don't want to invest in training an apprentice only to have him/her go somewhere else to work.

2. Machine shops don't want to invest in "hers".

3. Everything is done in modern machine shops by sophisticated technologies. There is nothing for the apprentice to do but sweep the floor.

4. There are all kinds of disadvantages to training apprentices written into labor laws and other legal structures.

5. At one time past young men had at least a passing acquaintance with making and fixing things. Now the only hand tools they know how to use are touch screens, keyboards and mouses. How can you train a machinist when that's all he knows?

6. Old machine shop bosses (most are old by age 40) expect their machinists to have 30 years experience in conventional machining and still be experts in solid modeling, multiaxis CAM, the quirks of a dozen different brands of machining centers and the latest fad in quality management. And be freely available to work 30 hours a week overtime when things are hot and sit home unpaid when they are slow. That's a lot to expect from an apprentice after just 4 years.

BTW, I know more than one unemployed middle aged mechanical engineer whose hobby is building his own CNC machines for his home workshop out of old computer hardware and scrap parts. Machine shops won't even look at these types.

Ed Weldon

A lot of skilled machinists in Australia have left the trade for for occupations that paid more. For example a skilled machinist earns A$36000 per year ( award rate ) unless s/he is lucky enough to work for someone who contracts to the mining industry and gets paid above the award. I left and built pergolas and put down decking for about 70% more. A cleaner for the building industry will also earn 50% to 150% more than the award wage for a skilled tradesman. Why be a tradesman?

When i was an apprentice the first year wage bought about 35 medium ( 10 ounce ) bottles of COKE. i.e. 30 shillings. aside; I cannot convert to US$ because we were on the gold standard back then and i think 10 shillings was worth about US$2.20. making it US$ 6.60.( Today it equals US$3. )

30 shillings then equates to about A$70 today ( in COKES ). The starting wage for an apprentice today is A$290. So it is less afordable for a company to hire young people today.

Once hired a young person soon learns that practicaly any other job pays heaps better. The elephant in the room however is the mining companys that pay machinists A$150000 per year. These tradesmen fly in to the mine, work for two weeks solid 12/14 hrs a day and then fly home for a week.

Not many young people want to be away from friends and the opposite sex for that long.

So it is much more attractive to sell radios in an air conditioned shop earning more money than it is to be a metal tradesman.

I'm not sure I understand your pay rates by hour or day or by cokes, But I do an annual survey of our machining industry in the US and the US average for a multi spindle machine operator was $15.22 in 2009; if he can do setups and Operate, the rate was $19.11; $20.44 for a setup man; and a team leader with all those skills in the us average reported was 22.41. per hour. $31,657 US dollars if only working 40 hours per week, plus benefits is Lowest Pay for someone who is merely qualified to be a stand alone operator.

When you realize that most shops do not work just 40 hours and schedule overtime, I think the wage is NOT the issue. (US median income for persons 25 and older with only HS education is $31,135)

Grow your skills to become setup man and just straight 40 hr wages gives you $42,515 annually more than any Associates degree median income and again without OT. Typically our shops are reporting 3-4 hours of scheduled overtime per week right now. At that rate, $46,766 is a likely Gross income, and comparable to a 4 year degree median income. WITHOUT THE EXPENSE AND LOANS OF COLLEGE.

I can assure you that Retail is not paying this kind of wage, nor food service.

Thanks for the mining industry Info. Thatsounds pretty doggone exciting.

Milo

Most of us look for money when planning future. People know that job of a machinist is not paid well. Why would I send my kid to become a machinist if it does not pay as much as a job of a banker who receives $multi billion bonuses? Just make good bonuses for machinists and you would get as many as you need or more! Many machinist work in other fields after production has moved to China. Why would they risk to come back to uncertainty of machinist life? To please you?

At the depths of the us recession, There were still plenty of ads in the paper looking for QUALIFIED MACHINISTS. Comparing billion dollar managing partner bankers with PHD's and arcane economic trading schemes with Craft work is nonsensical. WHy not comparre earnings with Geography majors (Michael Jordan was a geography major) or pro golfers?

I have posted about earnings for the trade elsewhere on this thread. I disagree that everybody knows that machininsts aren't paid well. I have shown they are at the US median WITHOUT Overtime added in. That means better than HALF the rest of the workers...

Milo

The cynic yields to the gentleman from the PMPA. Points well taken.

I think an important aspect of this involves recognition of the level of aptitudes (note the plural used here) required in the development via training and experience of a high skill level "machinist". A look back into history shows lots of men in this occupation who were the in the highly intelligent category. The same folks in today's world would go to engineering school. progress to advanced degrees and direct their careers toward the technologies whose waves were near or at a peak. But back then we were in the century of mechanical and civil engineering and that is where the demand and the salaries were. But formal engineering education was a rare thing reserved primarily for the wealthy student. And the world of business, finance, law and politics was not the lottery that it has become today.

In today's world the brightest immature minds are naturally attracted to the game with the biggest payoff. It's very difficult to get a young intellectual talent to go in the direction of a mechanical engineering technology that carries a lower status in a society where everything comes from the "store".

Another issue that derives from the "Store Gives All" mentality is that the talented young person never gets a glimpse of his/her own internal aptitude for making things. Lacking that the temptation to follow those brightly shining dollar signs on the horizon is all the greater. There was a time when kids would build their own toys and gain early recognition of those innate talents. When I was a teenager it was fixing up your first car, building model airplanes or for the more sedentary a model train hobby or Ham radio. The motivation for that disappeared as the ease of going to the "Store" grew.

But people still have the talent to "make things" in their genes and all the discouragement that today's society can mount will not make that go away. Where talent exists there is the potential for self satisfaction and self determination. All it needs is to find the right doorway and open it at the right time in life. That time is the teenage years when the young brain is changing rapidly and wide open to influences that will have a profound effect on later life.

Think about this. Later tonight I'll pen one of many possible suggestions and share it. For now I have a spoiled dachshund looking for her lunch and a list of to-do's to take care of. .............Ed Weldon

A while back I looked into a news report about a fabrication company in New York state that was whining about not being able to get trained machinists.

In a nutshell, I was not surprised when I found their starting rate was US$12.00/hour, and this in one of the highest taxed states in the US. Why should I sell my 5 year apprenticeship and 7 years experience on top of that for those kind of wages? I could make that by comfortably selling cell phones at Radio Shack and a lot more being a desk jockey as my present position as a CAD specialist.

The value of skilled tradesmen (non-union) is all out of whack in this country. And I'm not talking about "push-a-button" machine operators.

Hooker

Out of Whack, Yes and the field needs much improvement But you can not compare (as many often do) retail with a tradesmen job, You can compare hour rates all day, But and good machinist 7 to 15 years experience can earn $18-$23+/hr +overtime+ benefits in a good shop. Starting off the street with no experience yes $9-$12 really how much do you pay someone with no skills? training in this field takes years.(long term investment for worker & shop owner) I can sell phones at radio shack for $12+/hr with 2-4 week training, but in 5 yrs I will only be making $12/hr and not have any benefits to speak of (you can't compare) If you want to make the quick buck, sell phones! A Toolmaker /Machinist can have a very satisfying & challenging career and make a good living. I'm not sure if selling phones is that satisfying

Jim C

Maybe I wasn't clear. This shop was (and it was in a tv news report I saw) offering $12/hr for JOURNEYMAN machinists, preferably with CNC programming/setup/operating experience. I also validated that on the shop's web site. I wish I could remember the shop's name. Of course, I did not call to see if they'd negotiate.

BTW, I have sold cell phones at Radio Shack. The money is not in the hourly rate, which here in Virginia is $8/hr. The money is in commissions and what they call Spiffs (incentive bonuses for selling certain phones, rate plans, accessories). It is not unusual for a decent salesperson to make over $100 on a single transaction which will rarely take over an hour unless something goes drastically wrong in the activation process.

I probably averaged about $75 per cellphone sale and if I could do two sales in a 7 hour shift (they are short to avoid overtime issues) I was living pretty comfortably. And that doesn't include commissions and incentives on sales of other products. Throw in two of those $100+ sales and I was often a very happy camper. And, Radio Shack offered fairly decent benefits (ie, health insurance, etc) at the time. That was about 5 years ago so I'm a little out of touch.

And, we had to take regular certification tests or we couldn't sell particular (read money making) products.

Now, recalculate those numbers you threw out there and compare them with the machine shop I described. 4/5 years to be a machinist or 2 weeks of training and the chance to meet lots of cute young women? What would the average 18 year old male opt for?

Hooker

Hooker, you were clear. Its just the lowball rates that you quoted are not typical with what our industry reporting show us.

So it is a failure of a particular shop top offer competitive rates in your example, not The entire industry is paying lowball rates that is the issue.

Milo

Thanks, Milo.

It's a shame, then, that the media failed to do some rudimentary research to put the shop's "lack of applicants" whining into perspective.

Ah, well, maybe journalism training should be switched from collegiate training to an apprenticeship.

Hooker

Precision machining is one of those vital businesses that is in direct competition with cheap foreign labor, and the low prevailing wages reflect that. We currently subsidize our financial industries by giving them trillions in 'free' money from the Fed. We subsidize the medical industry by paying about twice the going rate for healthcare. We subsidize the real estate industry with generous tax deductions for mortgages. We subsidize the oil industry. All these things increase our cost of living dramatically. If we want to change that one solution would be to subsidize the precision machine industry.

A better solution would be to stop subsidizing the others. If prices for necessities weren't so astronomical machinists would be able to make a living. But while these subsidies are wrecking our economy, they are concentrating wealth is the hands of those few who benefit from them, and those folks have wisely used that excess cash to buy one of our major political parties, and a big chunk of the other in an effort to keep and add to these subsidies (I'll let you decide who is who). As a society we have chosen to make concentrating wealth by whatever means, a goal in itself. In a functioning economy acquiring wealth is a by product of creating value. When we get to the point where the Wall Street bankers, the Medical Insurers, real estate developers, and oil companies have all the money, we can expect to see...well just about exactly what is going on now. Sorry about that machinists...you are well and totally screwed.

BTW: I still have all my machine parts made here.

I'm in Western Canada. Machinists are pretty much universally underpaid and under-appreciated for what they can do. I started out as a machinist. Did 10 yrs as a general do-all machinist, saw what the millwrights and welders were getting paid compared to me, jumped ship to the millwright trade, got my structural welding ticket as well and now make at least $15 more an hour than the guys at the local jobber shops.

Another point here is that while employers complain of 'no tradesmen out there!', they have a hard time sending out their own people for apprenticeships stating quite emphatically, "Oh, we'll just hire a guy off the street who is already trained." North America (Canada and the US in particular), is in deep trouble for this very attitude.

Another thing I've seen many times is the aspect of apprentices not getting the valuable one on one training with a good responsible journeyman. We here are so unlike Europe where trades training is taken very seriously.

GA. While I snivel about the depth and intractability of our problems, and lamely point fingers at 'malefactors of great wealth', you propose an end run around them. I'm not a machinist, but I do have an old drill press I bought for $10 at a yard sale. Using a combination of clamps, hard stops, shim stock, a digital caliper, and sliding plates I've built an 'x/y table' that allows me to drill (and tap if necessary) holes in metal plates with an accuracy of ~0.005". This lets me quickly build mounting fixtures for optical components that I use in my work. It's pretty funky but it works and I still have all my fingers. I think I have maybe $80 invested.

The internet may be the most cost effective education system ever developed. Can't afford (or don't have the grades) to attend MIT and study math? The courses are available on line for free! Need help with a problem or a question? There are plenty of forums out there for free! There is no reason that machining should be any different. And a simple setup like the one I use would be suitable for building a more versatile and precise crank and lead screw driven x/y/z stage and sine bar system that could do mill work as well. Replace the cranks with stepper motors and you'd have a CNC system.

Thanks for this Ed! I just might repost this separately one of these days on my blog.

"A modest proposal..."

GA

Milo

Milo and anyone else -- Go ahead and use my text or any part of it any way.

I think the only way this could be made to work would be for it to grow the same way Linux grew. By a cooperative effort of lots of people who are willing to contribute gratis and a few really bright educator types willing to coordinate it all. I'd call it the "Starving Apprentices Workshop" and register the website as starvingapprentice.com.

How about flushing out a few ideas on specific building projects and what can be learned through the use of them?

So here's my hat on a new fictional persona: I imagine I am a laid off young man living close to the edge. Lucky I still have a roof over my head. Unemployment ran out and I didn't learn enough in high school to help me get another job. But I always loved to make things and take things apart and try to figure out how they work. I did OK in math and science courses and I can read. And I want a job where I make things. Somebody said that's what machinists do.

What do I read first? I have access to a few hand tools and my computer with an internet connection and a printer with a half full ink cartridge. Not much else. What can I build that will help me learn and keep me interested when I start falling asleep trying to read stuff that I don't understand? Who can I ask?

What's a simple project I can put together from the cheapest or free materials? Don't ask me to go buy a $50 tool. If I had $50 I could eat for a month without going to a "soup kitchen".

OK, I'll put the Ed Weldon hat back on and ask the rest of you guys what you are going to tell the new "starving apprentice?

Please don't tell him that Ed is going off topic and needs to start a new CR-4 topic. He already knows that. Ed just hasn't figured out how to frame a new topic in a way that anyone will notice and reply to. I'm still waving my hands in the air......

Maybe the answer is to tell our starving apprentice to go over to http://www.khanacademy.org/ and spend some time with the basic physics topics. As good as Khan's modules are I'm afraid we will lose our apprentice too soon if we send him there at this point.

I need suggestions and your logic behind them. Anyone up to that? Please help me......

Ed Weldon