To machinist friends who think that this recent cycle is unusual, I have compared it to what the woodworking industry went through in the early 1960's. I think there are fundamental changes, and small shop job-shopping will probably not likely come back on the same scale it existed 10 years ago, *in most communities*.
Before about 1960. Every town of any size had job shop woodworking shops. These made all the wooden parts used by the community. "Sash & door plants" "planing mills", "Millworks" made all the windows, doors, cider tanks, wooden tanks, flooring, bank fixtures, library fixtures, trim, mouldings, farm wagon beds and racks, drying systems and grain routing systems for the feedmill, etc. On a more national scale, there were larger shops making church fitments, theatre installations and organ cases, as well as all the TV and radio consoles, all the telephone switchboards and similar cases, on subcontract to the electronics industry. Nationwide, quite a bit of the population worked in woodworking as a fundamental industry.
By the early 60's, much of the work was going over to plastics and metal; and many of the products had become obsolete (wooden tanks, wooden car parts, e.g.). Then there was national consolidation in millwork (doors, windows, flooring, mouldings) and all the small town (wood) job shops were sold out at auction. Due to a combination of increased technology, and sometimes regulatory issues, some segments of woodworking serving commodity products are only viable as national producers.
Now woodworking jobshop has come back in a widely segregated niches. There is enough custom work for some well managed shops to survive who still do "everything". You don't see a sash and door plant in every town, but there is probably a millworks somewhere regionally that can make most anything an architect can spec for say a library, college, or church restoration or replication in new work. There are a couple outfits in NY that can go anywhere in the country to repair wooden tanks. (if you've ever flown low over NYC, most of the water systems on tall buildings start with a wooden tank on the upper stories) Other than kitchen cabinet shops, the rest of the work is in small custom one or 2 man shops making furniture or millwork essentially for corporate suites, and the very rich. There is very little "regular" year to year subcontract work that can be assumed anymore.
I think this is what is happening in metal job shop. Many products that took vast factories to supply metal logic systems are gone, replaced by silicone. Typewriters, electromechanical switchgear in every piece of communications equipment, cash registers, tabulating machines, watches and clocks, mechanical actuation systems in every piece of equipment now replaced by wires. It's all gone, and the subcontract for dies, tooling, and jobshopping the parts is not going to come back.
Steel rule die shops used to be common. Now they are replaced by waterjets and lasers, requiring far fewer people to do the same work, and other than the programmer, less skill. As recently as the 50's, almost very town used to have a foundry and maybe a couple pattern shops. But most of our products are no longer made with castings; or the castings are too sophisticated to afford to do them except in regional production plants. There used to be several tool sharpening and rebuilding shops in every city, but now edge tools are either insert or disposable. However, there are a few shops that do mail order on a national basis that seem to do pretty well.
More and more industries that used to have a factory in every decent sized town have consolidated to fewer plants, and they require larger, ever more sophistcated vendors to serve them. The amount of machined metal parts in most consumer items is decreased as often as possible to decrease costs. There is still mould and die work, but turn around times mean you have to be very lean, and very efficient. Worse, it probably means the size shop (available manpower) and capital equipment required need to be large. As soon as work slows, the costs are too high.
I think niche specialty shops will always be there, but the work will not come automaticaly just because the owner sends his facilities list around to a few local industries. Those industries are now sourcing their tools and needs internationally. There may actually be a lot more single man shops, whose low over head permits them to take a relatively small amount of "customs" business and do ok with it. There's going to be a few one or 2 man very high production shops running multi-automatics or some machining centers and making a phenomenal income by basically the owner doing all the work and also being able to sell the jobs in the right market. There will be larger job shops and stamping shops, as we know them today, but much fewer of them, and they will all essentially sell nationally. There will be lots more one man small niche shops, making their own product for market. Here and there, towns of a certain size will still have general purpose machine shops who don't mind repair and maintenance work, who will do very very well if the population base is big enough and there is still some industry left. But over all, I think there is just going to be fewer "real" machinist jobs for knob and dial crankers, becasue there is an ever smaller market out there for the products (services) they produce. As the trade diminishes in numbers, I do think that in some areas, there will be well placed and well trained individuals with a lot of insight, who can almost commmand whatever they want for a few rare positions. But these will be a lucky few.
Machinists will always own the fundamental need skills in any society. But the ebb and flow, or even evolution of the society will have an impact on how many are needed, what the work actually "looks" like, and whether they are well compensated as a class or not (market demand).
smt
