Dwayne Mace has been a painter and a construction worker throughout his 37 years at Lamar Advertising Co. Now he’s a digital billboard repairman training the next generation of workers.
“Everyone needs to be willing to adapt, or they will go the way of the dinosaur,” Mace tells The Wall Street Journal in a feature that includes the Baton Rouge-based firm.
Lamar is one of many U.S. companies retraining less-educated workers for more sophisticated tasks. Two-thirds of manufacturers plan to increase training in the next year, according to a report from the National Association of Manufacturers, and President Trump signed an executive order in July to explore ways to encourage investment in job-oriented training programs.
The U.S. unemployment rate was at 3.9% in July, near the lowest point in 18 years, and nearly a half-million U.S. manufacturing jobs were unfilled in June, according to the most recent Census Bureau data, a level last seen in 2001.
Some companies are experimenting with “radical reskilling” programs to turn entry-level employees into technology workers. The costs of teaching employees skills like how to run robotic machines can pay off through higher worker retention, according to executives and economists.
“I’m not trying to sell a job,” says Micky Vint, Lamar Advertising’s head of field operations. “I’m trying to sell a job as a career.”
Employees at Lamar have seen firsthand how technology has remade work in the U.S. In the early 1900s Lamar employees painted billboards by hand. By the 1990s, the company’s work crews were hanging those spaces with vinyl printouts.
Lamar is now turning to digital displays. While they cost up to $250,000 to buy and install—compared with up to $100,000 for a traditional board—the company is already seeing considerable returns. While just 2% of Lamar’s roughly 150,000 billboards have been digitized, that fraction generates more than a fifth of its billboard revenue.
Lamar offers higher wages to workers who complete the weeklong programs to train in on the digital displays, and about 425 workers have done so in recent years. Lamar currently employs 358 digital technicians.
