Job openings go begging in Michigan: Caterpillar CEO

Despite the high unemployment rate in the United States, Catepillar’s CEO says there is a desparate shortage of skilled workers, and many job vacancies are going unfilled in some of the most depressed regions of the country.

“I talked to one of our great customers in Detroit. I spent some time with our distributors. They have 50 job openings today that they cannot fill, and guess what they are. They are service technician jobs,” says Doug Oberhelman, chairman and CEO of Caterpillar. He was interviewed by CNBC on Friday.

“These are pretty technical jobs, lots of electronics, guys that go out and fix our construction equipment when it breaks down.”

Detroit has suffered during the economic downturn which hit the manufacturing and construction sector hard. Huffington Post reported that the unemployment rate may be as high as 50% in the city.

Despite the bad economic outlook in the U.S., Caterpillar has been hiring. It picked up 10,000 people in the last 18 months, and 300 in the first weeks of August.

“Everyday we are hiring because our business is picking up our export business is picking up. Even the U.S. as weak as the macroeconomic number for our business where we have seen such an inventory depletion in construction equipment across the country we are seeing some build back.”

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