Let’s work to fill available jobs while creating new ones

Llewellyn King (Jan. 21 Forum, “Need a Job? Try the Trades. Ignore the Stigma”) is one of many “voices crying in the wilderness” of unemployment on behalf of abundant trade careers with family wages, stymied by yet another bias in our country. It’s time to listen.

As he points out, there is a severe and growing shortage of skilled labor, yet Americans continue to look down on those without college degrees.

As we continue to be mesmerized by entrepreneurship, we can’t neglect the other “makers” who build the computers, the self-driving cars, the parts for the planes and ships that get us to global markets. We need each other to produce a thriving economy with broad employment options for all who seek work and workers.

In Pittsburgh, there are solid programs, many of which offer free or subsidized tuition, that train or retrain workers for a career that provides a job, salary and career opportunity versus deep debt, in clean, tech-enabled plants. Through other programs, like SWPA BotsIQ, high school students embrace the challenges and possibilities of applying their particular aptitude to career paths in manufacturing.

Have we learned anything from the demise of steel? The wolf finally comes.

As Mr. King concludes, “We’ll have too many graduates and too few people who can build and repair.”

We are working diligently to change the stigma and to focus on filling available jobs along with creating new ones. BILL PADNOS Director of Youth Engagement National Tooling & Machining Association Cleveland, Ohio