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David Del Castillo worked on an assembly line at the Knapheide Manufacturing Co. in Quincy for five years, until the economic downturn caused the company to lay off 185 employees in April 2009.
Some 400,000 Illinoisans lost their jobs in the Great Recession from February 2008 to January 2010 and 118,000 of those losses were in manufacturing, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
After earning an associate's degree in advanced manufacturing, Del Castillo, who lives in Quincy, returned to Knapheide truck plant and has doubled his income and responsibilities.
"It's neat, because it's doing a lot of logistics, computer programming and chemistry, like testing anti-rust paint," said Del Castillo, a former Marine and father of two teenage boys. He said that in his previous job at Knapheide, he put together parts of the truck bodies as they came by on an assembly line.
Del Castillo is the type of skilled worker manufacturing companies desperately want, but cannot find.
"Companies are literally starving for qualified workers," said Tucker Kennedy, spokesman for the Illinois Manufacturing Extension Center, a nonprofit offering advice, training and technical expertise to Illinois manufacturers.
A survey of more than 1,000 employers nationwide found a wide gap in jobs and workers. Eighty percent of those surveyed said they cannot find enough qualified workers to fill open positions, according to a 2011 survey by the Manufacturing Institute, an affiliate of the National Association of Manufact- urers, a manufacturing trade group.
The survey polled executives from 1,123 companies, half of those from industrial products companies.
Driven by advanced technology and globalization, manufacturing in the United States has evolved and is "vastly different today than it was even 20 years ago," said Kennedy said.
"It's much more of a computer-aided, collaborative process that requires math and science as well as good communication," he said.
Kennedy said the industry, as a result, has undergone a "mid-skills gap" — a shortage of U.S. workers who have mechanical or technical skills that require industry training or government certification, but not necessarily a bachelor's degree.
At Knapheide, "we get lots of applicants, but finding ones with the right skills has been hard," said Jim Rubottom, the company's vice president of human resources. He said most applicants do not have welding or machine-cutting experience.
Knapheide primarily makes the metal truck bodies for companies like AT&T as well ascontractors, plumbers and carpenters. Most of the company's 850 manufacturing employees are welders, Rubottom said. Others, like Del Castillo, program and operate the computerized machines that cut metal precisely.
David Del Castillo worked on an assembly line at the Knapheide Manufacturing Co. in Quincy for five years, until the economic downturn caused the company to lay off 185 employees in April 2009.
Some 400,000 Illinoisans lost their jobs in the Great Recession from February 2008 to January 2010 and 118,000 of those losses were in manufacturing, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
After earning an associate's degree in advanced manufacturing, Del Castillo, who lives in Quincy, returned to Knapheide truck plant and has doubled his income and responsibilities.
"It's neat, because it's doing a lot of logistics, computer programming and chemistry, like testing anti-rust paint," said Del Castillo, a former Marine and father of two teenage boys. He said that in his previous job at Knapheide, he put together parts of the truck bodies as they came by on an assembly line.
Del Castillo is the type of skilled worker manufacturing companies desperately want, but cannot find.
"Companies are literally starving for qualified workers," said Tucker Kennedy, spokesman for the Illinois Manufacturing Extension Center, a nonprofit offering advice, training and technical expertise to Illinois manufacturers.
A survey of more than 1,000 employers nationwide found a wide gap in jobs and workers. Eighty percent of those surveyed said they cannot find enough qualified workers to fill open positions, according to a 2011 survey by the Manufacturing Institute, an affiliate of the National Association of Manufact- urers, a manufacturing trade group.
The survey polled executives from 1,123 companies, half of those from industrial products companies.
Driven by advanced technology and globalization, manufacturing in the United States has evolved and is "vastly different today than it was even 20 years ago," said Kennedy said.
"It's much more of a computer-aided, collaborative process that requires math and science as well as good communication," he said.
Kennedy said the industry, as a result, has undergone a "mid-skills gap" — a shortage of U.S. workers who have mechanical or technical skills that require industry training or government certification, but not necessarily a bachelor's degree.
At Knapheide, "we get lots of applicants, but finding ones with the right skills has been hard," said Jim Rubottom, the company's vice president of human resources. He said most applicants do not have welding or machine-cutting experience.
Knapheide primarily makes the metal truck bodies for companies like AT&T as well ascontractors, plumbers and carpenters. Most of the company's 850 manufacturing employees are welders, Rubottom said. Others, like Del Castillo, program and operate the computerized machines that cut metal precisely.
Castillo and a few others also operate "E-coat" (or electrocoating) cleaning and painting machines, which require only one or two people to run and do the work that, 20 years ago, required 20 people, Rubottom said.
The rise of advanced manufacturing and the decline of the assembly line have gone
hand in hand, Kennedy said, and the Great Recession largely finalized the trend.
Between 2000 and 2010 — as more than 100,000 Illinois manufacturing jobs were lost— productivity rose 70 percent, from $82.10 to $139.71 per worker per hour, according to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.
And Illinois manufacturers contribute the single largest share of the state's economic output, 12.4 percent, according to the Illinois Manufacturers' Association.
In December, Illinois added 2,200 manufacturing jobs and last year added 12,000, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security's most recent data.
Before Del Castillo was laid off in 2009, he was studying for an associates degree social work at John Wood Community College in Quincy.
Then someone at the local unemployment office suggested he consider training in advanced manufacturing.
Del Castillo switched and finished the degree in two years.
Now he knows how to read blueprints, write computer code for machines that cut metal and adjust the chemical composition of the anti-rust paint sprayed on truck bodies.
He recently was promoted at Knapheide, after applying for different jobs there and
elsewhere. He said he turned down a position at the BASF chemical plant across the Mississippi River in Palmyra, Mo.
"That would have also paid well, but the drive was a little far," he said. Del Castillo declined to say exactly how much he earns. But between his income and what his wife earns at a local nursery, it's enough to live comfortably and well over double what he was making on the assembly line, he said.
The average manufacturing job in Illinois pays $64,000 a year, said Mark Denzler, vice president of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association, or IMA, a trade group representing state manufacturers.
