snip
"We're a mid-size precision machine shop in north Fort
Worth, near NE 28th St and Sylvania st.
We're actually pretty desperate to hire somebody who
knows how to work and program a lathe if you are
looking for work or know anybody who knows how to use
a lathe and is looking for work.
Leslie"
snip
=======================
The vise we have collectively put our hand into, and slowly tightened
is now beginning to hurt.

From the dialog in these newsgroups, conversations with many former and
retired machinists, and personal experience, I have been daunted by how
little regard the suits and average citizens have for the critical
importance of this occupation cluster and the considerable investment
of time and money required to reach just the beginning journeyman level
of competency. [Think 2,500$ and up for personal tools just to start.]
My concern is greatly increased by the total lack of any young people
in the machine shops and machining areas of employers I have visited in
our service area.

While this may not apply to the shop needing a CNC lathe operator, it
is entirely rational for students with the foundational skills,
characteristics, and abilities required for success in the CNC and
manual machining areas to apply their talents in another occupational
niche, given the instability of employment, obsolete and poorly
maintained equipment, poor working conditions, low status, high cost of
entry, and decreasing opportunities for employment and advancement
common in this field.

The unavailability of domestic competent and qualified machinists will
rapidly get worse as the existing personnel retire or die, taking with
them 200 years of experience, practical knowledge, and techniques.

The personnel problem is rapidly being compounded and exacerbated by
the increasing reluctance of the foreign producers [there are almost no
domestic producers] of machine tools, consumable tooling and materials
to accept the fiat currency of American dollars as payment for their
products. This is manifested in the drop of about 1/3 in the value of
the dollar, qua the Euro in less than 2 years.

A debacle is clearly looming for the American economy when we can no
longer domestically produce and cannot afford to purchase from foreign
suppliers. Even our supply of food is questionable. In 2005 or 2006,
the USA will become a net importer of food for the first time.

Collectively, we have made this bed, and collectively we will lie in
it.