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Employer Quotes
The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Manufacturing
They are talking about this topic: Workforce Trends & Challenges
The quotes below are about this issue:
Location is a continuing challenge for rural employers who face not only a declining labor supply, but also the challenge of competing with the salaries offered in metro areas.
| "Just getting people to know where we're located and what the location has to offer is huge for us because—to even get them here to see the plant and the area is—that's the biggest hurdle. They're interested in the jobs, but recognizing where we are and what we have to offer is big, too." | Northwest |
| "When we have people in college—and I think this would even go into high school—sometimes it's difficult for them to even get to your facility to see it. There was talk of loading up a bus and bringing them to the facility for a tour, but the distance up here is a real factor. You can have all the employment opportunities, but if they think you're too far away—or they actually don't even know how to get to the factory—that's a problem. People are busy working a part-time job trying to feed themselves and whatever, so how do we get them into our places and let them know that there are jobs for them? How do we communicate that there are places to live and all that stuff, too?" | Northwest |
| "A lot of us are in very remote, rural areas, so that is the difference that we're seeing in terms of supply and demand. Because on a local level, we need people and we can't fill these spots." | Northwest |
| "It's tough because when you show a regional map—I can't tell you how many times I sat in a meeting in the Twin Cities and said, 'Fergus Falls is not in northern Minnesota.' And I think that is really the key—when you look at where our colleges are serving and where they actually sit as opposed to where we recruit to. We have to do a better job of getting into those colleges and saying, 'Hey, guess what we're up to?' But, at the same time, I think there needs to be a connection there. Recruiting from four hours away is a challenge. So, that is the other piece, just how we connect with the distances." | Northwest |
| "All of our hires right now seem to be—there's definitely more of a majority that we're pulling external. We've saturated our market, but with orientations and stuff it seems that there are more and more coming from outside the area." | Northwest |
| "Most of those workers out there, I think they're working two or three weeks, and then they get a week off and they come home. And there are guys that are going from Texas up there, and then going home on weekends." | Northwest |
| "We had a couple folks come up to visit with us, and a big concern is housing. They want to know if housing is available. So, if we're trying to attract people to Thief River Falls and some of the other places, we definitely have to have the housing available to attract people." | Northwest |
| "I wonder if others feel the same way, especially in this region. When I see some of the data about openings and things like that, I tend to think we're more competing with that central Saint Cloud area more than way up north. So, I think that tends to skew our region a little bit. Because there's kind of that big gap in between." | Northwest |
| "We're going to keep manufacturing here in the region—but we talked about pay escalation and stuff like that—and we don't want to lose business to low-cost regions or low-cost countries, right? There's always the thin line that we have to deal with every single day." | Southeast |
| "I go all over the United States. I've flown a couple of people in for interviews. I'll do whatever I need to do to find them. But I've got to have them." | Southwest |
| "We heard that also in Brainerd—they can't find production people to stand on the lines and do these kinds of things. And when they do get them, they don't last very long. So, to the extent they can automate, they're doing that. But you can't automate everything." | Southwest |
| "Part of it is because of the [lack of] availability of labor in southwest Minnesota. I mean, we just don't have the numbers to keep throwing people at the labor. It's cheaper eventually just to move to robotics." | Southwest |
| "The level of skill that we need is comparable to what machinists who work in the medical device industry need. And we can't compete with wages in the metro area." | Southwest |
| "I've been thinking about our conversation here, and there are a couple of things I want to put on the table. Those of us who've lived in southwest Minnesota for many years, we need to recognize something: We are de-populating at a rapid rate. I'm a marketer by profession, and you can run from demographics, but you can't hide. And the idea that came to my mind as I listened to all this is that we're going to build some sort of apprentice system—from the high school to the technical school to the four-year school system. We're going to have to find a way to entice people to come into this type of profession if we're going to be able to maintain viable businesses in southwest Minnesota. We're talking about being terrified about losing so many employees to retirement. I don't know where the next five production workers are going to come from, quite frankly. So, we're going to have to find a way. I think some of the other employers that are here today are experienced with the engineering graduates from [MnSCU college]. These young engineers came into our midst, and they learned what it like to be in this plant, and we learned from them, too, because they had advanced degrees. So, that type of environment is helpful, but I don't know how we're going to do that. Here in southwest Minnesota, I don't how else we're going to do it because people aren't coming here to live." | Southwest |