Manufacturing Day is a growing grassroots movement of manufacturers dedicated to overcoming the shared challenges facing manufacturers today The most pressing issue — the growing skills gap.
According to research from Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute, the United States faces a need for nearly 3.5 million manufacturing jobs over the next decade, and 2 million of those jobs are likely to go unfilled due to the skills gap. Experts agree that this challenge will only grow as the demographics of our workforce evolve with retirements, new technological advances requiring a higher level of training and certification, as well as our K-12 education system, which continues to lack the necessary focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education.
Manufacturers’ ability to address this issue has been hindered by the public perception that careers in manufacturing are undesirable and by insufficient preparatory education. Both of these problems stem from a lack
of understanding of present-day manufacturing environments, which are highly technical.
“Whether you are designing or making a product, today’s jobs require technical skills,” explains Greg Sbrocco, general manager for Global Supply Chain – Services at GE Transportation in Erie and member of the Manufacturer
& Business Association (MBA) Board of Governors. “Unfortunately, students begin losing interest in math and science around middle school.”
Read more in the October 2015 Business Magazine.
