The number of manufacturing jobs in the Midwest is going down, but factories say they can't find workers to fill manufacturing jobs. As they say, it's a puzzlement.
A Chicago Tribune article laid out the problem, without pinpointing the reason or saying what to do about it. In his invaluable blog, Bill Testa, the vice president and director of regional research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, has charted the trends -- Midwestern manufacturing jobs down sharply (from 4.2 million jobs in 1998 to only 2.7 million in 2010), with any improvement likely to be "modest."
This is the heartland of manufacturing, right? We know the Midwest has always lived on factory jobs. Even if the number of those jobs have declined, many factories are still there. Many factory jobs these days pay well. Most workers in factory towns don't go to college, so would be attracted to industrial jobs -- or so you'd think.
All this makes sense. And yet the workers don't seem to be there.
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