Prospectus: After a 'Gray Tsunami,' Manufacturers Have Acute Need for New Workers

R.J. Watson anticipates a busy year.

But the Alden manufacturer knows it could be tough to find more employees to hire to share the workload.

In addition to advertising job openings and offering referral bonuses to its employees, the company is exploring whether to invest in robotics as a way to ease its labor crunch.

"We are looking into different technologies, so the same people can do more," said Eric Watson, executive vice president at the company, which makes heavy-duty components for bridges.

Long before COVID-19, manufacturers were coping with a worker shortage. They talked about the "gray tsunami," a wave of workers rolling toward retirement age and not enough young people filling those vacancies.

Manufacturers short on staff often resort to turning down work, or telling customers it will take longer to fulfill orders.

The pandemic has exposed a worker shortage in a wide variety of industries. While the manufacturing sector has weathered the pandemic relatively well, the struggle to find enough workers continues. 

"We take respite in knowing it's not just endemic to Buffalo," Peter Ahrens, executive director of the Buffalo Niagara Manufacturing Alliance. "It's a national, global problem."

The problem is two-pronged, Ahrens said.

Manufacturers have an acute need for workers, to keep up with current demand, and they need to cultivate new talent for the long term.

The National Association of Manufacturers estimates there are about 1 million manufacturing job openings across the country. That's a challenge for manufacturers at the same time they are grappling with supply chain disruptions.

There's no single solution, but Ahrens sees a few ideas that would help:

• Providing good pay and benefits.
• Tapping into worker training.
• Connecting with students at a younger age about career opportunities.
• Updating manufacturing's image after decades where factory work was viewed as a dirty, noisy career with few openings and little opportunity for advancement. Roughly two of every five factory jobs across the Buffalo Niagara region have vanished since 1990.

Manufacturers say times are different now. For starters, factory employment across the region has stabilized.

Many employers have bumped up their pay and benefits, to keep pace with other industries competing for the same talent, but that approach has its limits, Ahrens said.

"You have to keep your cost of goods sold as low as possible to remain competitive and keep margins, so you can live and fight another day," he said.

Manufacturers are hiring newcomers from places like the Northland Workforce Training Center, but those programs generate only so many graduates each year. Other companies are turning to apprenticeship programs to develop their own talent.

Ahrens said manufacturers have to persuade young people that they have stable, good-paying careers to offer.

Part of that is dispelling the notion of manufacturing plants and machine shops are dingy, dark places to work, and prone to layoffs or shutdowns, he said.

Ahrens said finds the worksites he visits are clean and well-lit: "As I like to say, it's not a bad way to spend eight hours."

But image is clearly an obstacle manufacturers need to overcome.

A Deloitte survey found less than 5 in 10 Americans though manufacturing jobs were as stable and secure as other industries. And less than 3 in 10 said they would encourage their children to pursue a manufacturing career. 

"Manufacturing likely needs a rebrand to get out the good news on its advanced technologies and career advancement opportunities," wrote Paul Wellener, vice chairman and U.S. industrial products and construction leader at Deloitte, in an IndustryWeek article.

The manufacturing sector in the Buffalo Niagara region isn't as big as it used to be. The region averaged about 51,400 jobs in 2021, which was down 34% from 20 years earlier.

But the sector's job count has been relatively stable in recent years. And manufacturing remains a significant slice of the economy, accounting for about 10% of the region's job in recent months, according to state labor data.

At R.J. Watson, Eric Watson said the company wants to bring more people aboard, particularly with federal spending on infrastructure about to ramp up.

"We're already filling up our backlog without that," he said. "That's only going to help."

Written by:  Matt Glynn, Reporter, for The Buffalo News.