Five equipment manufacturing trends to watch in 2022

It's critically important for equipment manufacturers to not only develop a keen understanding of these trends, but also how they will evolve over time. Perhaps most importantly, however, those within the industry must be able to assess their impact on equipment manufacturing and the customers it serves.

So, with that fact in mind, let's look at five key trends poised to impact equipment manufacturers this year:

Workforce Challenges and Solutions

(From Julie Davis, AEM Senior Director of Workforce and Industry Initiatives)

When it comes to workforce, 2021 has proven that doing what we've always done will no longer get us what we used to get. Demographic research shows that employment challenges are not going to return to what they have been pre-pandemic. If anything, the pandemic acted as an accelerator that took labor force trends already sneaking up on the industry and exploded them into a new reality.

The most significant trends include the shift from a baby boomer pre-pandemic drift towards retirement to a pandemic mass exodus of retirements. Second, a labor force participation rate that was declining since 1980 dropped to record lows with 2.4 million women leaving the workforce, fewer millennials seeking careers of their own, working age males increasing preferring part-time over full-time work, and an opioid epidemic siphoning off prime-age men by the hundreds of thousands per year. Finally, we have to recognize that the U.S. birthrate has been steadily declining, hitting a 35-year low in 2019, according to census data. With fewer and fewer people available, the labor market will continue to tighten. If you are looking to immigration as a solution, be cautious, as the same decline in birth rate is happening in countries we typically look to for sources of immigrant labor.

So, what can companies that have been willing to be curious teach us?

First, if your HR department says they are doing everything they can, consider it a red flag. The war for talent is being won by HR departments whose mantra has become, "What else can we do?" Being curious includes evaluating and offering competitive compensation, meaningful benefits, potential career development opportunities, and, most of all, flexible work. The employee experience needs to be reconsidered, much like we've analyzed the customer experience in the past. Important considerations include:

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Source: Greenhouse Grower