It’s old news in oil and gas industries that there’s a skilled labor shortage, as there is in every industrial sector.
It’s old news in oil and gas industries that there’s a skilled labor shortage, as there is in every industrial sector. And it’s getting worse due to demographics, the “silver tsunami,” and cultural realities enervating students’ appetites for pursuing trades in “old” industries, even though they’re essential for all the new, shiny products and services.
It’s long been known that industrial automation can help here, by amplifying the effectiveness of those, of any age, with skills. But automation has done little to alleviate the skills gap for most tasks in most industries.
Of the millions of industrial robots in the world today, the majority are isolated to bolted-down or high-volume tasks, found in automobile manufacturing or similar factories. As the need for task flexibility rises, or the size of the firm shrinks, the robot share shrinks faster. Even for firms of over 500 employees, just half have industrial robots. And you won’t find any industrial robots in 90% of America's manufacturing enterprises.
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Mark P. Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute; a partner in Cottonwood Venture Partners, an energy-tech venture fund.
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