Eighty-five Percent of Employers Report Difficulty Finding Qualified New Hires

When almost one-quarter of an industry’s workforce is planning to retire in five years or less, it creates an opportunity for new workers to enter the market. When 85 percent of employers in those industries report that it is difficult to very difficult to find new hires with the right skill set to perform those jobs, it creates a potential workforce disaster.

Those are two of the findings reported in a study just published by Fluke Corp. The “Fluke 2012 Workforce Trends Study” is summarized in the latest issue of Fluke News Plus; a link to download the complete study is included in the issue.

“We are going to be looking at a lot of people exiting the workforce,” says Randall Ambuehl, training director for Northwest Washington Electrical Industry Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee (JATC) in an interview excerpted in the study. “At the same time we’re going to have to pull in large numbers of people to take their place. What we thought was going to be a training spike five years ago is going to be deeper … to meet those needs.”

The workforce study, conducted in July 2012, surveyed the views of more than 1,600 test tool users, educators, trainees and hiring managers to determine current workforce trends related to test and measurement skills. Fluke asked for their views as to what job opportunities exist in the current market, what training and experience is needed to succeed in those jobs, and how market entrants received that training.

The study also includes excerpts from interviews conducted with educators and union trainers on job market and training issues and taps third-party resources, like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook 2012-13, to provide trending data.