The ongoing search for talent is complicated by the lingering global health crisis, which continues to make some workers reluctant to report for duty, as well as an increase in unemployment benefits and the availability of more competitive wages elsewhere. The result has been a significant manufacturing worker shortage in recent months.
“It’s not that we didn’t have labor problems before,” Harbour said, “but we now started competing with unemployment. For a lot of the smaller suppliers that support these big Tier 1 suppliers, starting wages are $11, $12, $13 an hour. All of a sudden, now people could stay home and make the equivalent of $15 an hour.
“The big guys could afford to pay people $18, $19, $20 an hour,” she added. “If you were in a little shop, you couldn’t compete even with your customer.”
Now, Harbour said, the manufacturing labor pool is being wooed by job openings at Amazon and fast food restaurants that pay $12 to $14 an hour.
Supplier “labor costs have gone up significantly because of the labor shortage,” said Marcus Hudson, executive director of Calderone Advisory Group. “They can’t get product out the door because of [microchip] shortages, and because they have labor issues.
“Those have caused the supply base not to be nearly as stable as it should be at this point.”