TechForce Foundation, a non-profit organization that encourages and supports students to and through their technical education in nearly all transportation industries, has released a Transportation Technician New Entrant Demand report.
The technician shortage facing the transportation industry has been one of the industry’s most pressing concerns for several years, yet has been surprisingly overlooked by the mainstream media. In its most recent 15-page report, TechForce Foundation tries to determine what has caused this issue, and provide tangible data and examples providing the severity of the shortage. It provides “annual projections for new entrant demand for automotive, diesel and collision technicians and adds recent, annual, historical demand to explain why a shortage developed — particularly for automotive technicians — and why it continues.”
One key focus within the report is Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.
TechForce Foundation writes in its executive summary for its report that the transportation industry has failed to prove its case regarding a labor shortage with “labor statistics from a reliable source outside the industry, particularly the BLS.” The new Demand report sets out to address the reasons for that issue, and the factors that create discrepancies between industry and BLS employment data.
From there, the new report dives deep into why demand is so strong, pointing to economic growth and catch up demand from last decade’s recession as key factors in the transportation industry’s current employment struggle. The demand needs in the automotive, collision and diesel marketplaces are addressed individually within the report. In regard to the diesel market, TechForce Foundation writes the industry’s shortage is actually not as dire as previously reported. The Foundation says a shortage does exist, but that a growth in post-secondary programs and graduates has stepped in to accommodate increase demand.
In conclusion, the report singles out reputation, me-first employers and a failure by the transportation industry to engage with potential talent earlier in their educational careers as the largest drivers of the industry’s talent gap. The report posits that the transportation industry’s best chance for eliminating its talent gap is rebuilding its reputation around technology, and using an industry-wide coalition to support its careers in schools.
To read an executive summary of the report or the entire report from TechForce Foundation, please CLICK HERE.
