Dive Brief:
- Carrier Corp. will cut 215 jobs, a year after President Donald Trump made a deal with its parent company, United Technologies (UTC), to keep its workers employed, AP reports. The layoffs begin Thursday, leaving 1,100 employees remaining at the plant. Carrier cut 340 jobs in July.
- Trump visited the Indianapolis-based plant after his 2016 presidential win to tout his tax-incentive deal with the company. The agreement called for preventing a plant closure and saving 800 furnace production jobs for American workers.
- Rexnord Corp. permanently closed down its plant in November, and UTC plans to close a separate Huntington, Indiana, factory sometime this year, says the AP. Both companies are shipping jobs to Mexico. Republicans maintain that corporate tax cuts under the new law will produce jobs.
Dive Insight:
The Trump administration's call for preserving American jobs and stopping the flow of jobs to Mexico hasn't kept some U.S. firms from doing either.
Thanks to the new tax law, companies like Aflac, Comerica and Suntrust Banks, Inc. said they plan to use some of their corporate tax savings to raise their minimum wage, pay workers one-time bonuses and increase 401k contributions. But how much job growth will come out of the new tax law isn't clear just yet.
Although manufacturing gained 20,000 jobs in December, third in number only to the healthcare and construction industries, the rise of automation may seriously threaten a number of jobs in the sector. According to Willis Towers Watson, only 5% of employers are fully prepared for the coming increase in the next three years. Currently, companies anticipate automation accounting for, on average, 17% of work during the next three years, up from the current 9% and the 5% of three years ago.
To meet this challenge, employers may need to take the time to consider their current jobs and project the nature of future jobs, including which will disappear permanently and which will require human co-pilots. To find workers with the right skills, employers may need to focus on upskilling and preparing workers for jobs that don't exist yet.