Business and educational leaders met in Pittsfield Tuesday to detail available state-funded job training for an array of manufacturing fields.Representatives from area companies and schools were at Interprint to highlight a $138,000 state grant that will support free manufacturing training for six months in Berkshire County. The plan is to take 66 people through machining, forklift, welding, computer and similar courses with a 70 percent job placement goal. Berkshire County Regional Employment Board executive director Heather Boulger says if the effort proves successful the area could be in line for two additional years of funding.
“Here in Berkshire County the main challenges facing our companies are a shortage of highly-skilled workers, the retention of our younger workforce and the pressure to find replacements for what’s anticipated with the baby boomers retiring and opening up a lot of those job opportunities,” Boulger said. “We have to make that knowledge transfer happen and we have to make it happen soon.”
The training targets those who are about to or have recently graduated from high school, the under- or unemployed and current manufacturing workers who want to develop more skills. Training applications can be found on the regional employment board’s website.
Interprint’s communications director Peter Stasiowski says there are currently 127 manufacturing job openings in the county.
“Did you know that manufacturing companies actually represent 8 percent of the Berkshire workforce?” Stasiowski pointed out. “That’s about 5,000 workers. The annual manufacturing salary in Berkshire County is more than $55,000 per year.”
Taconic High School in Pittsfield and McCann Technical School in North Adams will host the trainings starting later this month. Some of the 125 Berkshire County manufacturing companies such as Interprint, Sinicon Plastics and Crane & Company are advising the effort by developing training curriculum as well as offering shadow opportunities and interviews when appropriate. According to the employment board, many of the county’s manufacturing companies fill niche roles in paper, plastics and medical devices unlike the larger industries of yesteryear. Pittsfield Mayor Linda Tyer says the economic shift and technological advances of the past decade have prompted a need to train and retrain an adaptable workforce with a variety of skills.
“We live in a knowledge-based economy,” Tyer said. “The main engine of economic growth is the human mind. While this economy has generated tremendous wealth and continues to provide us opportunities in Berkshire County, it has also sharpened the economic disparity between the educated and the under-educated and between urban and rural areas. These demographic trends make it more difficult for us to meet these challenges especially in Berkshire County where we are rural, where our population growth has declined and our labor force growth rate continues to slow.”
December’s unemployment rate for Massachusetts was 4.6 percent. The rate was 5.6 in Pittsfield’s metropolitan area, 6.7 in the North Adams region and 4.3 in the Great Barrington area.