The minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, but low-skilled jobs in Michigan start at $10.00 an hour, and pay even higher than that for competent, dependable people. The median wage for a production operator for a local company near me situated here just across the lake from the one in Manitowoc mentioned in the story below commands $13.57 an hour.
From the story here:
Mike Fredrich shows off unmanned presses in his Manitowoc, Wisconsin, company. They're ready to start production at MCM Composites, a 55-person enterprise that makes custom thermoset molding. The only problem? Fredrich has no one to operate them. "These tools are heated to 300 degrees," he said. "But we're not running them. Had we had the people for the first shift, we could have been running this all day. But we don't, so they sit here heated, ready to go, with no action." Fredrich said the business has gone to extremes to try to find the 15 additional employees it needs. But he's had little success.
"There are no workers, but there's a huge demand. The economy has picked up, but the market is so thin, that we just can't find them. We've gone to extraordinary means to find people that will actually work, including going to the local county jail and recruiting people to work from inside the jail," Fredrich said. ...
Fredrich is also looking for a core staff of his own — low-skilled laborers he's willing to train and pay above minimum wage. "What they need to be able to do is come to work on time every day, pay attention to what they're doing, take instruction well, and just put in an honest day's work," he said.
