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Employer Quotes
The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Engineering
They are talking about this topic: Workforce Trends & Challenges
The quotes below are about this issue:
Many incumbents are reaching retirement age without a sufficient replacement workforce.
| "We have a lot of younger workers, so it isn't so much the retirement issue from our perspective. But as we grow, the backfill of the other industries creates a shortage for us. We need to put new workers in. A lot of what we have is simply a result of the shortage that is going to happen. We can't grow. This also means increased competition for those new workers. And while our workforce is gradually growing, we have five or six job openings posted on a sign as you drive by our company." | Central |
| "And I think there is an issue with the Baby Boomers. There are many, many very skilled people in the industry and in manufacturing that are going to be retiring over the next five to 10 years. And we're wondering who is really looking at that? Who is really encouraging our young people to go into these fields? I'm not sure how that's working. When I was talking to the high school—I was talking to the principal over at Willmar—and I asked him what the counselors teach. What do the counselors tell them about what's going on? It's a very difficult situation. How do we get the message out to the young?" | Central |
| "We graph the years of experience—at least I do—based on discipline, and on almost all the disciplines, I've got this chunk of folks with experience that are going to retire. There is this little gap in the 10 to 15 year range. There is—like a camel—this second hump of a lot of great new entry-levels, but for us it takes a lot of mentoring." | Metro |
| "I'm really wondering what are you doing about the age wait? Are you getting enough applicants coming up through the education system? As far as I know, for the next 20 years, half of the workforce is still going to be current—that is, those people who are in the workforce now are still going to be in the workforce. And there are fewer coming in, so I'm just kind of wondering in terms of getting back to the incumbent worker question and the aging workforce. I kind of feel a sense of panic that there is going to be this big shift—people retiring and things like that—and we're not going to have the workers that we need." | Metro |
| "We have a lot of retired people who work part-time. No one ever retires out of our company." | Metro |
| "Some of our clients are struggling with the gray wave. During the downturn they lost staff or their staff is retiring, so they don't have as many engineers on staff in the industry, and so they're relying more on us as consultants and as partners." | Metro |
| "I've got my demographics here just for Hibbing, and you can probably multiply it by six mining companies on the Range. In our management area, we've got 36 people that can retire today. And in our hourly group we've got 168 that can retire today." | Northeast |
| "We're in the middle of all sorts of expansions and retirements. We are involved in about five projects, and if they happen, we're going to continue to have even a greater shortage of engineers." | Northeast |
| "Engineering is just so critical. So, electrical and mechanical controls—we need them. And, again, the statistics are so surprising because we see a great need that is going to increase in the future, not decrease. We cannot find enough of them, and in the future we're going to need more." | Northwest |
| "Also, regarding workforce needs, the statistics say that the work is coming back to the United States from overseas, which is a great thing. But that puts more pressure on us to be able to do high quality, efficient work in the United States. So, it's on us for hiring qualified engineers that can design these types of things to make it more efficient for our customers. So, that is where I see the pressure." | Northwest |
| "As far as trends, we see an ongoing need to continue to hire electrical and mechanical engineers because of two reasons. We have engineers that are going to be retiring and also because of growth. If we see growth in our business in the next five years, we're going to have to hire more people. I don't see that changing. It is kind of a tight market, but we anticipate a continued need for electrical mechanics." | Northwest |
| "I'll comment because I think I bring a little bit different perspective. We're talking about industry here, and we mostly serve the public sector. So, everything that affected us, the effects that were in the economy in the private sector, we didn't see it for a year or two later. We're like, 'What's going on here?' Now, as the economy is picking up and private industry is picking up, we're still in the lag. We're still stuck with the low budgets of the public sector. And we saw a lot of early retirements. And a lot of people that retired—because of the lack of work and needing to reduce the workforce—were never replaced. So, now, as things are starting to pick up, we're going to need additional workers, probably in the next few years. And it's going to have to be a young workforce, or we'll bring some of the older people back. But the need and the gap are really going to be in the younger staff, and that's where we just haven't hired as many on that level as we intended to." | Southwest |
| "We have about a third of our workforce that's within 10 years of retirement." | Southwest |