SPRINGDALE -- Northwest Arkansas' supply of skilled workers already lags behind demand, and the skilled workforce the region does have is aging, the chief operating officer for the Northwest Arkansas Council said Thursday.
Almost half of the teachers in Northwest Arkansas and three-fifths of the region's tool and die makers are older than 45, said Michael Harvey in a presentation to the Northwest Arkansas Human Resources Association. The group met Thursday to formulate a strategy its employers and the council can use to address skilled labor shortages, said association spokesman Brent Carroll.
Other types of skilled employment face similar situations, both Harvey and attendees of the conference said. Harvey cited federal labor statistics.
FM Corp. in Rogers, for example, makes molded plastic products for machinery used for medical testing and analysis. Making those components requires a trained engineer, said Deb Cook, the company's human resource director.
"It's very difficult to find experienced people at this," Cook said. "We have trained people in-house, but it takes three to four years to get someone to that skill level.
"Every one of these machines we make is part of a special order. We've had special orders as low as 50 units."
Production of each batch requires engineering of its own, she said. That requires working out a new process for each order.
"At some point, the people we have will want to retire," she said.
Harvey said Northwest Arkansas employers had jobs paying up to $25 an hour that they couldn't fill even during the recent historical highs of joblessness.
"To those who say that this is just a pay issue, that employers need to pay more, I say that employers were finding this to be an issue in the depths of the recession," Harvey said.
"We've been trying to 'attract' our way out of this for years," he said of recruiting workers to Northwest Arkansas.
Part of the reason the strategy hasn't met the need is a reluctance of people from larger metropolitan regions to move to Arkansas, he said.
"Once we get them here they love it," Harvey said.
Business on 02/13/2015