Shortage of welders leaves unfilled jobs
The national need for welders is exploding
By Chris Moore and Eleanor Shelton
Tom Graham has a calm, cool demeanor. He’s a big man with Grizzly Adams-like hair and beard, but when he lowers his large black welding helmet down over his face he turns into Darth Vader on a mission.
Why is Graham so confident? Maybe it has to do with job security. He’s a skilled welder and he knows that companies like Sweepster Inc., the world’s largest rotary sweeper manufacturer based in Michigan, would come to a screeching halt without workers like him.
According to both the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, manufacturing companies are screaming for welders because they are needed anywhere metal gives a structure its strength.
In the dry language of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Because of its strength, welding is used in shipbuilding, automobile manufacturing and repair, aerospace applications, and thousands of other manufacturing activities. Welding is also used to join beams when constructing buildings, bridges and other structures, and to join pipes in pipelines, power plants and refineries.”
In other words, welding is used in a lot of places.
Altered degree plans to fit your needs
Kilgore College is helping ready welders for the workforce through a newly introduced degree plan, in addition to their traditional certificate program.
“Instead of just having their basic courses and physical skills training, students are going to get a more in-depth training through the associate’s degree,” said David Galbraith, coordinator of industrial and transportation technology at KC. “In addition to the welding courses, they will now study the humanities, grammar, match and science classes, making them a well-rounded employee.”
By introducing the degree, which when approved will be partially funded by a grant from the East Texas Tech Prep Consortium Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 1998,* KC also tweaked its requirements for certificate completion and applied better-fitting courses for each avenue a student might choose to pursue.
The traditional welding certificate has been divided in two and now offers a basic and advanced certificate. The basic consists of four courses and 16 hours of course work while the advanced is nine courses and 34 hours. The new associate’s degree can be obtained in 64 semester hours.
“We added welding fundamentals back into the certificate plan, introduced a metallurgy course and reintroduced our introductory blueprint reading class because the industry has become more concerned with those skills in workers,” Galbraith said. “Students will get more in-depth welding instruction with the associate’s degree because they’re going to cover things like metallurgy that will make them more suitable for a foreman position because of their acquired skills.”
Worldwide welding
Those acquired skills may even be used in outer space.
NASA has given Delphi Corporation – a leading supplier of mobile electronics and transportation systems to the automotive industry – grants totaling more than $3-million to develop a more durable welding technique for the components of space vehicles designed for long missions. Welders and fabricators also help design and build the parts for Indy 500 and other Grand Prix racing.
“More than half of the Indy car construction is accomplished with welding, to say nothing of repairs,” said Randy Glassburn, editor of Lincoln Electric Stabilizer, a newsletter for welding professionals. “Name it – chassis, exhaust header systems, intake manifolds, tubing, shafts, brackets, housing and fittings, all of it.”
For those with a high risk tolerance there is also underwater welding. These intrepid welders repair such structures as submerged oil drilling towers, ship hulls or industrial seawalls.
When the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth II ran aground near Martha’s Vineyard in the earl 1990s, it took almost 200 welders and other skilled tradesmen 22 days to get the 67,000-ton vessel shipshape to cross the Atlantic back to its German shipyard.
Solid as a seam weld
According to an August 2006 Wall Street Journal article by Ilan Brat, because of two things – that welding is not a job that is easy to automate and the nation’s infrastructure is aging – there will always be a need for good welders.
Currently, the average age of welders is in the mid-50s, meaning a wave of retirement is looming. Companies who hire many welders are beginning to worry and are adding perks, like signing bonuses and guaranteed overtime to attract new welders.
“There is a shortage in the welding labor market due to attrition, and with the expected retirements that shortage is not going to get any better,” said Galbraith.
*Note: The Associate degree is pending approval by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
