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Guilford furniture manufacturers address skilled worker shortage

Furniture manufacturing is not dead.

That’s the message Joyce Rice is spreading. She’s a business services consultant with GuilfordWorks, a workforce development board that connects employers with job seekers.

Local furniture manufacturers — like many other industries — are struggling to find workers to make their products.

Last week Rice led an information session about the local labor shortage in the furniture industry. She says companies are finding it hard to develop a pipeline of talent.

“These are jobs that take a high level of skill, which would also come with a high level of value," she says. "So if you apply for one of these jobs, these manufacturers are prepared to train you, develop you, give you the hands-on skills and training that you need.”

Among the possible solutions that emerged from the discussion was reaching out to students in Guilford County high schools and at Guilford Technical Community College which, among other things, offers an apprenticeship program that works with area manufacturers.

Rice says companies are also developing succession plans so that when senior workers retire or leave, there’s a talent pool the industry can tap to fill those positions.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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