TIL that some parts of transformers are still made by hand...
“This is an extremely manual job because they have to be extremely precise in the way they do it. If not, there will be some issue later down the road with the equipment.”
But I'm having trouble squaring this:
[Transformers] can be as large as buildings or as small as garbage cans. The ones made in South Boston can weigh up to 285,000 pounds, roughly the equivalent of 24 elephants or 65 pickup trucks.Orders for larger transformers have exceeded supply by about 14,000 units this year, according to Wood Mackenzie. Similar labor and supply-chain hurdles are slowing the construction of natural-gas-fired power plants and gas turbines, which have a yearslong backlog.
with this:
Marissa Emerman, who started at the factory in October as a first-assembly manufacturing associate and was taping cables on a recent afternoon, said the role was intimidating at first—but it pays $4 more an hour than her previous position as a manager of the local animal shelter.
Surely, our economy values the extremely-only-done-by-hand maker of transformers at a rate that is more than $4/hr more than animal shelter manager?
Pay for manufacturing jobs at the South Boston factory starts at $19.33 to $24 an hour, approaching the county’s median household income of about $49,200, according to 2023 census estimates.
Something doesn't add up here. If there is a 14,000 unit backlog, you'd think it would make sense to raise pay to keep your workers around and attract new ones.
Maybe it has something to do with this:
Manufacturers in the power industry had little reason to boost output until recently because electricity demand was mostly stagnant in the two decades before 2020.