Page 75 - MetalForming Magazine June/July 2022 80th Anniversary Issue

Nucor
Takes the
Workforce
Development Bull by the Horns
A survey of Precision Metalforming Association member companies identifies a foreboding trend: 73 percent say they are struggling to find the needed engineering talent to drive their businesses, and only 63 percent have a strategy for developing their engineering talent pool. Of note: Steel producer Nucor does have such a plan, which it’s been successfully executing for years.
BY BRAD F. KUVIN, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
“The engineering jobs market is going full steam again, giving job seekers more options than ever before. On the employer side, the candidate shortage makes finding good people an even
greater challenge.”
So goes a recent article from recruit-
ing firm PRA USA, adding that, “over the course of 2021, the demand for engineers increased as projects came off hold. At the same time, the decade- plus-long trend of a shrinking supply of engineering candidates accelerated. Given the demographic shift, with more leaving the field than coming in, we can expect the candidate market to get even tighter.”
A recent survey of Precision Metal- forming Association member compa- nies reenforces this foreboding trend, as 73 percent of those surveyed say that they “currently (or expect to in the next 3 to 5 yr.) struggle to find the needed engineering talent to drive their busi- nesses.” Nearly equally unsettling: Only 63 percent say that they have a strategy for developing their engineering talent pool during the next 5 to 10 yr.
Even as universities have adapted their curriculum in recent years to pro- vide industry with engineers trained in diverse subjects such as robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and additive manufacturing, the demand for automation engineers and material scientists, in addition to more broadly educated mechanical and manufacturing engineers, will grow at an accelerated pace in the coming years. It behooves manufacturing com- panies to do all that they can to increase the engineering talent pool, by helping recruit students to these professions, and providing guidance and support to engineering colleges.
In addition, some larger manufac- turers have taken matters into their own hands and launched their own education programs. Case in point: steel producer Nucor Corp., based in Charlotte, NC, which in 2014 created the Nucor Technical Academy, in Tuscaloosa, AL. The company employs some 30,000 workers throughout its more than 300 North American facili- ties. The technical academy “is designed to launch successful Nucor
72 MetalForming/June/July 2022
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