Without reading I can give a most likely answer: money. If the job is exhausting and dangerous but pays a tenth of what middle management makes, which is a tenth of what the CEO makes, then I think we might have the reason.

Without reading, I'm just going to guess most of it has to do with low wages.

I’m not a big financial expert and I haven’t read the article but the answer is most likely: the pay is shit.

They don't want to train anyone. Same story as always. They won't invest in their workers.

dumb motherfuckers would honestly benefit if their workers unionized

When people say it's about Money, specifically, it is about Profit. They are making obscene profits, and they can't sacrifice one single penny of it; in fact, they have to have even more of it. They can't continue to exist without a constant stream of ever increasing profits, to hear them tell it.

The Federal Minimum Wage has been increased only twice since 1997 for a total of $2.10. It has been at $7.25 since 2009. When people demand an increase in the minimum wage, there are only two outcomes expected from it - higher prices, or lost jobs, and it is always presented as if those are the ONLY two options available. It never occurs to anyone to perhaps demand that corporations should MAKE LESS PROFIT.

That profit should go back to the workers who actually EARNED that profit through their sweat equity. The argument that they already earn enough doesn't wash when employed people are living in their cars as a housing choice. Push those sorts of lifestyle compromises long enough, and they become normalized. Someday soon, we'll have celebrities on TV talk shows going on about how they lived in their car for the first few years they were in town, and it was AWESOME!

Since Covid, Transnational Corporations and their Sociopathic Oligarch owners have reset the costs of living in America, raising prices on everything, without any adjustment on the compensation for labor side.

We've been screwed since Congress redrew the Tax Code in 1974, which baked Trickle Down Economics into the tax code. Ever since then, more and more money is transferred from the middle/working classes to the wealthy. They've been stealing from us for decades, and they just want to keep doing it.

The median salary of $43K in 1975 has increased to only $50K today, while they would have been making $92K if the tax code hadn't been steadily re-written to enrich the wealthy at the cost of the middle class and poor.

In that same time period, the mean income for the top 1% went from $289K to $1.384 million, while they would have been making $630K under the old tax codes.

Thats a 17.4% increase in the lower median, and an increase of 321.6% in the 1% median. Clearly there has been an upwards distribution of wealth at the expense of the middle class since the tax codes started to be re-written in 1974 to favor the top economic tier.

Read more about it :

New York Mag: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/09/rand-study-how-high-is-inequality-us.html

Fast Money: https://www.fastcompany.com/90550015/we-were-shocked-rand-study-uncovers-massive-income-shift-to-the-top-1

I bet the reason is simple $$$$$$ pay people money and watch how we work.

For those of you unwilling to actually read the article, it's not money.

The pool of blue-collar workers who are able and willing to perform tasks on a factory floor in the United States is shrinking. As baby boomers retire, few young people are lining up to take their place.

...

For some companies, remaining globally competitive involves the use of sophisticated equipment that requires employees to have extensive training and familiarity with software. And employers cannot simply hire people right out of high school without providing specialized training programs to bring them up to speed.

...

“We spent three generations telling everybody that if they didn’t go to college, they are a loser,” he said. “Now we are paying for it. We still need people to use their hands.”

...

The country is flooded with college graduates who can’t find jobs that match their education

...

The Trump administration’s aggressive cuts to training programs for blue-collar workers have also hurt efforts to train a new generation of factory workers.

They’ve tried everything but paying more.

It's really not more complicated than "the pay isnt enough." If you can't compete with McDonald's or Home Depot, you're not looking for workers, you're looking for victims.

I would be reluctant to take a factory job, even if it paid more than my college educated job. You are more than likely going to be forced to move to the middle of nowhere to develop hyper-specific skills. Once the company decides they had a bad quarter, they're going to lay you off and you'll face moving away entirely again to find another job. And you'd better hope you were performing tasks with transferable skills, otherwise the next factory is going to start you off on the same five or ten year cycle of working for raises and better positions before it happens all over again.

The modern boom-bust-layoff cycle tells me that I should never invest in a company, because nobody is offering guarantees and they are especially not offering contracts. And if they do, there's no way it'll be for my benefit.

With my college education, I at least know I have transferable skills and have been able to pick an industry I actually enjoy, instead of settling for what was nearby or available.