JUANA SUMMERS: U.S. manufacturers are facing a skilled labor shortage that is only getting worse. Our colleagues at The Indicator, Adrian Ma and Darian Woods, dig into one man's unusual journey to try to solve this problem.
DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: When Darnell Epps learned about this projected labor shortage, his mind started racing.
DARNELL EPPS: I couldn't understand why there was this inability to find talent when there were so many people that were desperately in search of middle-class careers.
WOODS: Darnell decided he wanted somehow to help bridge that gap. But at the time, Darnell was in his second year of law school at Yale.
ADRIAN MA, BYLINE: So he started talking with some investors who had experience with manufacturing startups. And one early idea they came up with was virtual-reality skill training.
EPPS: But after trying out all this different hardware, we kind of all got cyber sick.
MA: But, you know, this failed foray into VR training led Darnell to another realization.
EPPS: I needed to go to trade school to really see for myself, like, what kind of positions these employers are looking to fill or what are the skills needed to fill them.
WOODS: He enrolled in a vocational school, a local branch of Lincoln Tech.
EPPS: So I was reading Ginsburg opinions and then hopping in my car and running into the vocational classes where I was learning to become a machinist.
WOODS: A machinist, by the way, is essentially a trade person that specializes in making metal parts. Going to trade school at the same time as law school also drove home for Darnell why many manufacturers say hiring is their biggest challenge.
EPPS: It was kind of sobering because, when I enrolled at Lincoln Tech, I went from having 50 students in my torts class at Yale to then going to my machining class and only having two other people. So that highlighted where we were with our priorities as a country, as a society.
MA: Are you saying, in effect, that we have enough lawyers and not enough machinists?
EPPS: (Laughter) What I'm saying is that we should have just as many machinists as we have lawyers, right? That ratio shouldn't be 50-2, right?
WOODS: On a nationwide scale, the ratio of lawyers to machinists isn't quite that large, but there are currently more than twice as many lawyers as machinists working today.
MA: Right now, you also have the federal government investing billions of dollars to build things like clean energy infrastructure and semiconductor chip factories. The problem, Darnell says, is that if the workers aren't there to work in these plants, then these projects could become white elephants.
WOODS: Since graduating from law school and trade school, Darnell has started a company called Thurgood Industries, which is a nod to his legal hero, Thurgood Marshall. Think LinkedIn, if it were geared specifically towards manufacturing and construction jobs. And the goal here is sort of twofold - making it easier for employers to find potential workers and to make the trades more appealing to folks who might not have considered them.
EPPS: Part of the problem is societal because we've devalued what the trades do and how meaningful they are and the creativity.
MA: It's a marketing problem, in a sense.
EPPS: Yeah, it's a marketing problem. And I think, you know, too often, high-schoolers are told that if you don't go to college, you know, you're a failure, or that the career opportunities for you are going to be very limited. But there are alternatives in advanced manufacturing, and the trades are just that.
WOODS: Darian Woods.
MA: Adrian Ma, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUN B AND STATIK SELEKTAH SONG, "STILL TRILL") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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