Skilled Worker

By Parija Kavilanz NEW YORK -- President Obama last week promised a boom in manufacturing and 1 million new jobs if he is reelected. But is the boom for real? For high-paying, skilled manufacturing jobs, it just might be. The number of job openings for skilled factory workers has increased 38 ...

It's one of the strange outcomes of the Great Recession: At a time of high unemployment, when some 12 million Americans are without jobs, some employers are saying that they can't find anyone to hire. There have been lots of explanations for this, from job candidates' lack of cover letters to employers' ...

The United States and other large economies cannot find enough skilled workers, engineers and other in-demand employees, according to an annual study on talent shortages. The study, by staffing services giant ManpowerGroup, found that 34 percent of employers around the world report trouble filling jobs ...

By Parija Kavilanz NEW YORK -- U.S. manufacturers, frustrated by a shortage of skilled American factory workers, are going abroad to find them. Business for factories has surged recently, creating a huge demand for machinists, tool and die makers, computer-controlled machine programmers and operators. ...

Laina Hall graduated college before she finished high school. As a child growing up in the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Hall knew she wanted to be a hairdresser. So she enrolled in community college to get herself trained, while studying the civil war and calculus during the day. ...

Although the construction industry suffered a major blow from the recession, Payscale.com uncovered twenty places across the country that offer higher than average pay and high demand for skilled trade workers like carpenters, diesel engine repair technicians, and plumbers. ...

"Talking to you right now," says Daniel Lehmkuhl (pictured with Aneesh Chopra, chief technology officer of the United States). "I never thought this would happen." When Lehmkuhl decided as a child that he wanted to go into automotive technology, he never expected to one day get the attention of the national ...

Machining helps drive industry in America. Without precision-made parts, many of the products that people rely on day in and day out wouldn't function properly for very long -- if at all. The process involves the use of a wide variety of machine tools to cut or form material, usually metal, to precise shapes ...

This week, 17 young American men and women will battle it out under 150,000 watchful eyes in a Thames waterfront conference center in London. It's the Olympics of skilled labor, and the U.S. team will competitively plumb, lay brick, make cabinets, wait tables, style hair, and repair cars against 55 other ...