CBS news recently ran a series on the 25 college majors with the lowest unemployment rates. They also covered the 25 highest. Walk through the list, and you find that the majority of the most employable majors involve the biological, health and physical sciences. Where engineering shows up in the highest unemployment list, phrases like “industrial” and “materials science” tell me those are on the manufacturing side of things, where the pressure to cut costs and outsource have been the highest. If we dug deeper, we might figure out what niches within those fields are most critical to business goals, less prone to outsourcing, and therefore, “safer” here in the US.
It’s a tough climate out there, for certain, but a recent issue of the Capital Region weekly The Business Review highlighted some local companies who are finding and pursuing opportunities in their markets. The article about Plug Power jumped out at me for a few reasons. First, their rate of growth is striking, and the message from management shows the clarity of purpose behind their success. One result is the impressive number of relatively entry level manufacturing jobs they’ve been hiring for in the past year. In the past, these were the kinds of jobs that people could walk into with a high school diploma, a solid work history and some electro-mechanical aptitude, and through some combination of on-the-job training and continuing education, could advance to higher skill, pay and responsibility. Over the past two decades, jobs like like these have diminished, so this is great news for our region. By looking at Plug Power’s higher-level job openings, you can get a sense of the advanced manufacturing and engineering opportunities there.
I will continue to highlight some of the job and industry trends in the region, and provide some insight into how someone without technical training would work toward getting that type of job, in future posts.
Michelle Richardson
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