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Every time Terry Seaman walks the shop floor at Siedelhuber Ironworks, he comes face-to-face with one of the biggest concerns of the state's manufacturing industry -- gray hair.
"We have 16 people in our shop and only one is under the age of 40," said Seaman, vice president of the Seattle company. "Most are in their 50s and 60s."
Don't get Seaman wrong. He's happy with his employees. He just doesn't know who'll replace them when they all retire. "It's been impossible for us to bring younger people in," he said.
Seaman is not alone. Plenty of other manufacturers share his angst over the depth of the labor pool. While there are new programs aimed at training a new generation of employees for manufacturers, company leaders say deepening the employee pool can't come soon enough. They aren't just fretting about the future. They're also sweating the present as there simply aren't enough workers -- skilled as well as entry-level -- to met the manufacturing industry's needs.
The big fear? That an evaporating work force will cause the state's manufacturers to die on the vine.
Every two years, the state Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board (WTECB) surveys employers about training and employment needs. In 2007, 67 percent of the manufacturers that responded reported having trouble finding qualified applicants, compared to 55 percent in 2005 and 29 percent in 2003.
"We talk to employers all the time who...are struggling to find people to work in their company," said Mark Phillips, acting director of the Center for Manufacturing Excellence at Shoreline Community College.
Yet the real struggle is yet to come. According to the state Employment Security Department, nearly half (45 percent) of the state's manufacturing work force is between the ages of 25 and 34 slid from 33 percent in 1991 to 18 percent in 2007.
"There are not enough (young people) in the pipeline to make up for the retirement of the baby boomers," said Dave Gering, executive director of the Manufacturing Industrial Council of Seattle.
There are, however, two more than there were a few weeks ago. Meet Natalie Walker and Bri Smith. Sophomores at Marysville Arts and Technology High School, Walker and Smith symbolize the attention being focused on rebuilding the state's manufacturing work force -- everything from a new apprenticeship program to increased support for occupational education at the high school level.
Opened last fall, Marysville Arts and Technology offers students an alternative to a conventional academic track. Walker and Smith are enrolled in a program that introduces students to numerous skills in demand by manufacturers.
"Up here in Snohomish County, they're not just yelling for employees -- especially young intelligent ones -- they're screaming," said Mike Fittzpatrick, the Manufacturing and Engineering Academy program's instructor.
The key to meeting that demand, said Fitzpatrick, is to expose students to the world of modern manufacturing, where new technology, such as computer numeric controlled (CNC) machining, opens their eyes to possibilities they never knew existed.
That's what happened to Walker and Smith after they returned from a field trip to Contour Aerospace in Everett.
"They literally jumped up and down after seeing the job possibilities, the technical challenges and the salaries," Fitzpatrick said. "But it wasn't the salaries that excited them most. It was the technology."
Before enrolling in Fitzpatrick's program, Walker wanted to be a makeup artist.
"As soon as I came back from (visiting Contour), I just threw that out the window," she said. A job at Contour "wouldn't seem like going to work," said Smith. It would be like having fun."
That's not how most people think of manufacturing. Instead, they associate it with the three Ds -- dark, dirty and dangerous, said Phillips. While technology has transformed the field dramatically in the last decade, young people remain largely unaware.
"The high school system has become more and more geared to preparing kids for four-year colleges (but) there's a large segment of our population that doesn't know about manufacturing work and would probably like to do that work," said Phillips.
The disappearance of traditional shop classes, where previous generations of students were introduced to manufacturing, is a costly loss, said Fitzpatrick.
"I ran the last shop program in our district," he said. "They're closing them left and right."
The upshot is a "real disconnect" between school and workplace, said John Vicklund, president of Washington Manufacturing Services (WMS), a nonprofit industry support group. "As a career opportunity, (manufacturing) has not done terribly well in recruiting."
With that in mind, WMS joined the National Association of Manufacturer's "Dream it, Do It" campaign to raise awareness of manufacturing careers. In addition to hosting a website, attending job fairs and collaborating with community colleges, WMS hopes to develop an outreach program targeting high school and middle school students.
Besides overcoming the general perception that manufacturing jobs are "depressing and onerous," Washington manufacturers also must avoid being painted with the same brush as manufacturers in other parts of the country, where outsourcing has hit hard, said Vicklund.
"The overall perception is that manufacturing is going away because we have plant closures in the Midwest and other parts of the country," he said. However, the more specialized types of manufacturing done here can't be as readily outsourced, Vicklund said.
That's especially true in aerospace, which is the 900-pound gorilla of Washington's manufacturing sector -- with an appetite for workers to match.
"Everybody is still in very much of a growth period," said Linda Lanham, executive director of the Aerospace Futures Alliance of Washington, a statewide industry association. "Their biggest priority is trying to find skilled workers. They're also having a hard time finding entry-level workers."
At least aerospace "still has a profile," Seaman said. Non-aerospace manufacturers such as Seidelhuber might as well be invisible in terms of career awareness, he said. The fact that even aerospace has hiring problems means that everybody else "really has a problem," Seaman said.
At the top of the food chain sits Boeing. As it scrambles to meet its own labor needs, Boeing is making it that much tougher for its suppliers and other manufacturers to meet theirs.
Earlier this year, the Legislature appropriated $3 million to provide apprenticeships to train workers for jobs with Boeing suppliers. The apprenticeships are being developed by employers, community colleges and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 751, which is already involved in joint apprenticeships with Boeing.
"Workers don't grow on trees," said Jesse Cote, organizing coordinator for District 751. "You have to farm them. If you don't, the health of the industry is at stake."
Another major training project is underway at Everett and Edmonds community colleges, where a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce is footing the bill for 600 people to earn various advanced manufacturing degrees and certificates.
Manufacturers also stand to benefit from a $100 million overhaul of the state's Career and Technical Education (CTE) program approved by the Legislature this year. Provided mainly through a network of skills centers, CTE classes enable students to prepare for a wide variety of careers -- including manufacturing.
Plans include expandingthe network of skills centers plus retooling the curriculum to incorporate more reading/writing/math and to bring various programs up to date. "This is huge," says Eleni Papadakis, executive director of the WTECB. "Without actively investing in the program, you end up having curriculum and equipment (that doesn't) align with industry's needs."
