Parts Production Strangled By Labor Shortage

Aircraft parts manufacturers say a labor shortage is stretching delivery deadlines and disrupting the recovery of the airline industry. According to the Financial Post, companies that laid off workers when the pandemic abruptly canceled demand are having a hard time hiring enough workers to meet demand now that things are returning to normal. And some are deliberately keeping staff levels below normal in case a recession spawned by a variety of factors plunges the industry back into a slump.

Boeing CEO David Calhoun recently told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce meeting the parts shortage is a serious and likely long-lived manufacturing bottleneck. “I don’t see this getting resolved anytime soon,” he said. The castings business is apparently one of the hardest hit because it’s labor intensive and hard to automate. The publication reported that some castings makers are more than a year behind in orders.