It is a fact that especially welders are in very short supply. Many process equipment fabrication companies could have increased business but are at 50% of needed welders. This has been going on for a decade. They are losing orders to Mexico, China, S. Korea, etc... because they cannot find workers build what is needed. It doesn't matter if the company is located in Upstate NY, Oklahoma, or Texas. The problem isn't price point to be competitive either.

If you had been to the Morgan City fabrication yards say 2 decades ago, the vast majority of workers were "Mexican". They certainly were in 2008.

At a fabrication yard in Butte, MT owned by Texas based major private industrial contractor, Bay Ltd, they had to import welders from India and the Philippines to produce contract volume of just under $1 billion annually for the several years they were building modules for the Canadian oilfields. They couldn't find enough American welders even with pay scales from $220 to $280 per hour depending on level of competency, which was acceptable price point for the buyers in Canada.

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Posted by GOP_Tiger

Baton Rouge

Member since Jan 2005

18011 posts

Posted on 4/28/24 at 8:39 am to CitizenK

The shortage of welders goes back even further than that, Citizen K. Since we're telling off-topic old stories ...

In 1997, I gave a tour of Louisiana to then-Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire. Sen. Smith was supposedly considering a presidential campaign in 2000, and that would have obviously been difficult for a small-state senator, but this is the kind of thing that happens as people want to make connections for the future.

Smith got to sit in Tiger Stadium as the guest of then-State Rep. Jim Donelon and watch LSU beat #1 Florida (the atmosphere of which completely blew his mind), so his trip to Louisiana was certainly not without profit, but ...

As part of his Louisiana trip, we toured Avondale Shipyards and were told that they had a bunch of Indian guys there on work visas, because they couldn't find welders to train, even at the starting price of $17 per hour (which would be over $33 in today's dollars).

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Posted by Turbeauxdog

Member since Aug 2004

23292 posts

Posted on 4/28/24 at 9:18 am to CitizenK

quote:
It is a fact that especially welders are in very short supply. Many process equipment fabrication companies could have increased business but are at 50% of needed welders. This has been going on for a decade. They are losing orders to Mexico, China, S. Korea, etc... because they cannot find workers build what is needed. It doesn't matter if the company is located in Upstate NY, Oklahoma, or Texas. The problem isn't price point to be competitive either. If you had been to the Morgan City fabrication yards say 2 decades ago, the vast majority of workers were "Mexican". They certainly were in 2008. At a fabrication yard in Butte, MT owned by Texas based major private industrial contractor, Bay Ltd, they had to import welders from India and the Philippines to produce contract volume of just under $1 billion annually for the several years they were building modules for the Canadian oilfields. They couldn't find enough American welders even with pay scales from $220 to $280 per hour depending on level of competency, which was acceptable price point for the buyers in Canada.

You didn't need to write all this, you could have simply said, "Turbeauxdog is correct"

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