The Engineering Shortage in Manufacturing: 800K+ Open Jobs

Narrator: From machine operators to welders and engineers, male employees have typically packed manufacturing jobs

Drew Greenblatt: At Marlin. On the factory floor, it's almost 100%.

Narrator: But the future of the traditional manufacturing workforce is somewhat fragile as less men are working.

Drew Greenblatt: "It's a huge concern that we cannot hire the amount of talent we need to hire to grow."

Narrator: Drew Greenblatt has been running Marlin Steel Wire Products in Baltimore since 1998. Coupled with post-pandemic hiring challenges, he says filling jobs these days is an obstacle unlike any other he's been dealt before.

Drew Greenblatt: "It's completely different. 20 years ago we could put a posting out and have the job filled in a day or three."

Narrator: Now Greenblatt relies on the help of temp agencies at a cost and he adds, the financial strain doesn't end there.

Drew Greenblatt: "We could accept more work and grow faster and make the company healthier if we had more talent."

Narrator: Over the past 50 years, the labor force participation rate—a measure of how many people are working or are actively seeking employment—has fallen among men aged 25 to 54 years old. Automation, government benefits, and even video games are commonly blamed as culprits. But there's one economist who doesn't find any of those theories very compelling.

Jonathan Rothwell: "Men who are struggling with health, either mental or physical, are a much more likely to be out of the labor market regardless of their other characteristics."

Narrator: Gallup economist Jonathan Rothwell says the decline in health among men in their prime working years offers the best explanation. He points to CDC data showing men aged 25 to 54 are increasingly health impaired physically and mentally. It's not yet clear what's causing this trend, but Rothwell has an idea.

Jonathan Rothwell: "Men who are in this prime age category who say they have experienced what—what the literature calls ACEs—of these Adverse Childhood Experiences, are just much less likely to be working."

Narrator: He believes the male participation rate will keep falling due to ACEs—everything from childhood abuse to neglect, which can have long-term consequences, including on a person's capability to work.

Jonathan Rothwell: "The forces dragging it down that come through family relationships and growing up in households that are experiencing difficult circumstances... I think unfortunately that's going to continue over the next decade."

Narrator: A lack of clear cause makes finding a workforce solution difficult. There is also no consensus on what the ideal participation rate is for men or women, but assuming it continues to decline, certain industries like manufacturing will continue to hang in the balance. Now, I quickly want to mention the labor force participation rate among working-aged women here. If you take a look at how that has changed over the past 50 to 100 years and compare it to the male labor force participation rate of working-aged men, it's completely different—mainly because over that time we saw more women enter the workforce. If you were to compare the graphs, they would just look completely opposite with the exception of the past few decades, where we see that the data has sort of stabilized for women. I also want to emphasize that the labor force participation rate among women—working-age women, that is, ages 25 to 54—is lower than that of men's. But they still have not seen as much of an impact, mainly through health, as we have seen among the male labor force participation rate. So, something interesting when you compare the data.

Drew Greenblatt: In 1998, when I bought the company, all we made were bagel baskets. All of a sudden, people stopped eating bagels because of the Atkins diet. We were really hurting for years. Shutting down would have been the right answer to most people, but I just was not going to give up. We've been able to transform, and now we've gone from bagels to Boeing.

Drew Greenblatt: My name's Drew Greenblatt. I'm the president of Marlin Steel Wire. Marlin Steel makes wire baskets, material handling baskets, and sheet metal fabrications for industrial clients, people like Caterpillar, Toyota, Pfizer, Merck. My real job is picking great talent, giving them clearly defined objectives, giving them the tools, invest in their training, and then get the heck out of their way. And now we've grown eight years in a row. Marlin's successful because of quality, engineered quick. These words are the essence of our transformation.

Drew Greenblatt: The techniques that Marlin uses are pretty simple. The Skills Matrix is a transparent way to show which employees have learned different tasks at our company.

Nathan Myers: The Skills Matrix here at Marlin is, uh, you're rewarded for learning new machines or procedures. When you do learn those machines or different skills, you make yourself a better employee. More valued to the company.

Drew Greenblatt: Cross-training's critical at Marlin. It makes us more adaptable, more nimble. This is expensive for our company, but it's a good investment. This enables us to weather the turbulence that's going on in the economy.

Roger Robertson: All of my training that I've had here at Marlin has been paid training, making sure that you can get things done as quickly as possible, not have one person who has all the skills be a bottleneck. Helps me grow, helps me be a better worker, helps the company out.

Liston Clise: Be more versatile is definitely a benefit to getting production done faster.

Drew Greenblatt: Classic Marlin story: This morning we got an order for a project we never made before. By 11:00 we had a print, by 1:00 our laser was cutting, by 2:00 our team had set up welders and benders to make the component, and by 4:00 we shipped it to California. So our client in California will have this tomorrow morning before they eat breakfast, and Liston didn't get introduced to the project until after lunch. So it's a real testament to Liston and his team to come up with a great product, tight tolerance, really fast.

Drew Greenblatt: We also have an incentive program so that each employee can receive a cash bonus if they hit their target. Money's a big motivator for our employees because it helps align our objectives. Our clients pay us to hit certain deadlines with certain quality expectations. We tie our clients' expectations with our employees.

Employee: We're given what's called a production goal of making a certain dollar amount a week. And if we do make that goal, we get a bonus. And that will appear on our check as a cut of the profits essentially, as kind of a pat on the back for saying, "You did a good job."

Drew Greenblatt: I think it's an innovative business model because we're sharing the wealth. We're incorporating our employees' success with the company's success. Our employees are with us for the long haul. They're critical to our future. And this is the reason why we're willing to stick our neck out and train them.

Kenny Browing: I've been working here seven years.

Hector Carmona: I work for 23 years.

Nathan Myers: I've worked here almost 13 years.

Andy Croniser: I've been at Marlin for seven years.

Employee: Uh, two years now. Lucky enough to work my way up to where I am now.

Drew Greenblatt: These are people. This is my team. I'm dedicated to their success. We're all in this together. We're fighting imports, we're fighting very sophisticated, savvy competitors. We don't import anything. It's all designed, engineered, fabricated, and made here in America. We're doing our part in Baltimore. We're doing our part in Maryland. This is the future. American manufacturing renaissance is happening, and we're an example of it.