I was watching the news the other day and saw a report about the unemployment rate and businesses looking for workers. The gist of it was that there are a lot of businesses (mostly small businesses here in the Midwest according to the report) who are looking for skilled help right now but they cannot find qualified people to do the work. The type of people they need most are skilled workers who can run lathes and mills, welders, pipe fitters, sheet metal workers, etc.

Back when I was still teaching about 17,18 years ago there was a trend in education to do away with industrial arts classes in both the public schools and even some of the colleges. They were being systematically replaced with "technologies" classes. The schools argument was that by the time those kids graduated those skilled labor type of jobs would no longer exist.

To enhance the problem, many of the tech schools offering machinist training changed their curriculum from machine shop operations to CNC programing. I have a friend from church who is a "certified machinist". This friend can't run a manual lathe. To my mind, if you can't take a piece of steel and use lathes, mills, etc to make something your not really a "machinist". If all you have learned to do is program CNC your a computer programmer.

Most of the dumping of these skills by educational institutions was brought upon by gov grant programs pushing the "technologies" programs. On top of that, it is expensive to maintain and run a good HS industrial arts program.

Are there other employment ops in other fields not being filled because the education system used a cracked crystal ball?

Your thoughts?