Can Wood Businesses Learn from Other Industries?

The woodworking industry, along with other businesses, faces a shortage of skilled labor.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics, while not the most insightful analysts, forecasts an 18% growth rate in demand for cabinetmakers through the end of this decade. (For entry-level carpenters assistants in construction, job growth rates are even higher.)

In terms of typical on-the-job training, occupations that typically require apprenticeships are projected to grow the fastest at 22.5 percent. About two 61.6% of those openings will come from the need to replace workers who retire or leave the field.

That's a lot of employees to find. Where wil they come from?

Traci Tapani's hunt for skilled workers could be the story at many woodworking firms. Featured in the newspaper today, Tapani and her sister run Wyoming Machine, a sheet metal company that cuts and shapes in short runs and custom projects - not unlike custom woodshops.

Tapani tells of needing to hire 10 welders in a hurry for a big subcontracting job. The challenge will sound familiar. People interviewed for the jobs were taught their skills in high school shop class or in a family business - in this case welding. But most couldn't qualify for the positions Tapani had open.

People interviewed for the jobs were taught their skills in high school shop class or in a family business - in this case welding. But most couldn't qualify for the positions Tapani had open.

They could make beautiful welds, she said, but they did not understand modern techniques, "They did not know the science," Tapani told commentator Thomas Friedman. "Unlike a Chinese firm that does high-volume, low-tech jobs, we do a lot of low-volume, high-tech jobs, and each one has its own design drawings." So the craftsman (in this case a welder) "has to be ableto read and understand five different drawings in a single day," she says.

Tapani could easily have been talking about custom woodworking, or any other skilled techical production field.

Woodworking businesses as a whole are divided into two groups: custom service businesses, producing individualized projects with customized casegoods, millwork or one-of-a-kind furnishings; and production manufacturers operating in a factory settings.

Though both sides of the business use the same trees and shape and finish them into salable goods, custom cabinetry and interior build outs are tracked tracked by the government either as service businesses, or manufacturing.

All areas of woodworking are experiencing a shortage of labor. But it is the smaller businesses that are more less equipped to train internally. With only one or two specialists in a given area, they don't have the resoures for training. And woodworking skills competency does not always include the ability to train others. 

Here is where the woodworking industry will be well served to look at how other business segments in cultivating employees,

Community colleges have trouble keeping pace with the new skill requirements for industry, notes the author of the article in today's newspaper. He cites education-for-work authority Eduardo Padron, president of  Miami Dade College:

"The skill shortage is real," Padron says. "The big issue is in Ameica is not the fiscal deficit, but the deficit in understanding about educaiton and the role it plays in the knowledge economy."