Kickstart: An 'out of balance' labor market

The U.S. labor market continues to outperform expectations, with statistics released March 8 showing the U.S. added 275,000 jobs in February.

In this week's print issue of Plastics News, PN Economics Editor Bill Wood calls the state of the labor market "out of balance," leaving employers under pressure to come up with wages that retain and attract good workers but unable to pass along those costs.

"When it comes to the supply of labor, U.S. manufacturers are competing not only with other manufacturers for workers but also with a lot of other sectors," he writes in this month's Number That Matter column.

Expect to see the column posted on plasticsnews.com later this week, but if you want to get into the weeds on jobs numbers before then, you can download a digital edition of this week's issue here.

A new study says the auto industry is nearing the tipping point when electric vehicles will be cheaper to produce than standard internal combustion engine cars. I wonder, though, how many auto suppliers will be able to keep competing until then.

Our sister paper Automotive News Europe writes that Pedro Pacheco, vice president of research at technology analysis company Garner, says that by 2027, new manufacturing techniques and lower battery costs will make EVs less expensive to make.

At the same time, suppliers are facing demands for higher wages (see the reference to Bill Wood's column above this), especially in the wake of the United Auto Workers' new contract.

Add those to other increased costs for supplies, energy, shipping and general operations. In addition, conditions are particularly heightened for smaller companies that have less leverage in negotiations, Laurie Harbour, of Harbour Results Inc., told Auto News in another story about the industry.

"If I'm making a million stamped parts per year, I can [ask customers for price increases to account] for material price increases. But for tooling, it's a one-time spot buy, and you're competing with China," she noted.

Are there any tabletop games that include a roll for sustainability? Because the creators of Die Hard Dice, based in Orem, Utah, may have rolled a natural 20.

Last month, the company began selling its Reroll line of dice, made using recycled acrylic sourced from the runners of its standard polymer dice production.

Founders Todd and Jessie Tiemann noted on the Die Hard Dice website that they first noticed the scrap while touring production of its dice at a shop in China.

"[We] asked if they could be recycled into new dice. At the time, the answer was no," the company noted. It worked with new partners to research, collect scrap and turn the material into new dice.

"Rather than letting our extra plastic go to waste, we're turning it into something we hope can make a difference," it noted. The recycled dice are priced at $9.95, which is a few dollars cheaper than the company's standard acrylic dice sets and half the price of its least expensive metal set.