America's Lifeline

The United States is seeing a dramatic drop in available and competent workers within the manufacturing sectors. Our country faces a shortage of workers who possess basic career skills and a strong work ethic for filling advanced manufacturing jobs. In 2003, a survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) revealed that 80% of U.S. manufacturing employers had a serious problem finding qualified candidates for the highly technical world of modern manufacturing.

While participating in a Today's Medical Developments Roundtable discussion at the 2007 WESTEC show, François Gau, global segment manager at Kennametal, Inc., spoke out on the lack of skilled labor in the U.S.

"What I find when I go to visit my customers is the lack of available talent. We, as an industry, have to work toward fixing this. There are numbers, published in the press, that showcase the imbalance of mechanical engineering graduates out of the U.S. versus the rest of the world; it's an astronomical difference."

The DoL is addressing the critical workforce needs of the advanced manufacturing industry. The DoL holds forums with employers, representatives from industry associations, and others involved in the advanced manufacturing industry to learn about their hiring and training needs. In 2004, the U.S. Secretary of Labor announced a series of investments totaling more than $43 million to support comprehensive partnerships that include employers, educators, the public workforce system, and other entities.

The premise behind this investment was to address the needs of the manufacturing business, while also assisting workers in finding good jobs with good wages and promising career pathways. Some of the ideas from this initiative were: expanding the pipeline of youth; helping alternative labor pools gain industry-defined skills and competencies; developing new training strategies; developing tools and curricula for enhancing skill sets; enhancing the capacity of educational institutions; developing industry-defined career ladders and lattices; developing strategies to retain and retrain incumbent workers; and assisting transitioning individuals from declining industries to high-growth industries.

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is also doing their part to keep the long-time tradition of great U.S. manufacturing alive and well. NAM has a Manufacturing Institute dedicated to facing the challenge of finding skilled manufacturers head on. Under grants from the Charles Stewart Mott, the Ford, and the Lumina Foundations, NAM's Center for Workforce Success has catalyzed business leadership in support of policies that promote accountability, affordability, access, and success of students in community colleges, as well as fulfilling the need for business champions. This Center for Workforce Success, which is the education arm of NAM's Manufacturing Institute, has been working on manufacturing solutions for 10 years. The mission of the center is to find and to promote workforce solutions for manufacturers in a global economy.

To accomplish these goals, the center provides manufacturing solutions through: access to highly-skilled workers; education with decision makers on a company's issues; involvement in making local changes; and research and best practices to keep companies in the know.

Another good idea brought up during the WESTEC roundtable came from Trace Jacobs, product manager at Iscar Metals.

"Apprenticeship programs, at the shop level, at the customer level, have disappeared. Slowly, we are beginning to see them come back – in a very limited manner – but they are making a comeback," he said. Jacobs continued, "Some of the bigger companies are opening up their training labs again and extending invitations for apprenticeships. Many of us are starting to realize that we have to do something, we have to really train our workers. I feel education is a great place to start, but it has to evolve into a place where they can get real-life experience as well."

NAM's "Dream It. Do It." career campaign is a step in the right direction toward apprenticeships. This campaign's focus is to make manufacturing a preferred career choice by 2010, reaching out to young adults, their parents, their educators, their communities, and their policy makers. "Dream It. Do It." will form strong and committed coalitions with local, political, educational and business entities. Through the promotion, a focused advertising campaign will be launched; a website providing highly-paid manufacturing jobs will be created; and partnerships with community colleges, technical schools, and local universities responding to the interest of studying for a career in manufacturing will be formed.

The Information Technology Industry Council is forming methods to ensure a bright future for U.S. manufacturers. The council stands by the idea that American competitiveness will drive the development of a highly-skilled workforce. In order to obtain and maintain the best and the brightest employees, American businesses must compete with companies from around the world. Highly-educated workers add value to the labor force by strengthening research capabilities, increasing productivity, and developing innovative parts.

There is, of course, a challenge to sustaining this well-educated, strong workforce. U.S. manufacturers need access to the individuals who will help develop tomorrow's technological innovations and keep our economy growing. The U.S. needs both long- and short-term solutions to help strengthen the U.S. workforce. In the long-term, the U.S. needs a strategy to expand the education pipeline for American students studying science, technology, engineering and math. In the short-term, the U.S. needs a commonsense approach to immigration policy that creates incentives for both U.S. and foreign workers to develop valuable skill sets that will contribute to American economic growth.

Even with all the negativity surrounding U.S. manufacturing, there is a way of putting a positive spin on it. Let's look at the fact that 72% of the manufacturing job loss in the U.S., over the past five years, is a direct result of productivity improvement. In the past five years, nine of the 10 largest industrialized economies in the world, including China, have lost manufacturing jobs. So, we are not alone, and this loss results from mechanization and automation.

With these improvements comes the dire need for skilled workers. Today's Medical Developments will be showcasing manufacturing companies who are stepping up and doing their part to maintain and improve a strong, competent workforce. Because, in reality, the U.S. is by far the largest manufacturing economy in the world; let's keep it that way.