Why the optimism toward a manufacturing comeback? Here are five reasons:
1) Cheap U.S. natural gas and other increased energy production are helping to power U.S. factories more efficiently, with gas especially providing inexpensive raw materials for U.S. manufacturers of plastics, tires, certain pharmaceuticals and other petrochemical products.
2) Higher wages in China and other foreign export markets are making outsourcing less profitable to U.S. firms.
3) Congressional approval in 2011 of trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama and other agreements being negotiated now with Asia and Europe are promising to open more foreign markets to U.S. products.
4) Major technology advances have steadily boosted factory efficiency and worker productivity.
5) High U.S. unemployment is relieving pressure on factory owners to increase wages, helping to make U.S. labor costs more globally competitive.
Yet, while many industries are doing more with fewer workers, more than half a million new manufacturing jobs have been added in just the past few years. Now we just need to get our educational system in line with the manufacturing jobs being created.
U.S. manufacturing companies have as many as 600,000 jobs that they cannot find workers with the proper skills to fill, according to a survey by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute.
The survey found 5 percent of current manufacturing jobs are unfilled due to lack of qualified candidates, 67 percent of manufacturers have a moderate to severe shortage of qualified workers, and 56 percent expect the shortage to increase in the next three to five years.
"These unfilled jobs are mainly in the skilled production category — positions such as machinists, operators, craft workers, distributors and technicians," said Emily DeRocco, president of the Manufacturing Institute, part of the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington.
"Unfortunately, these jobs require the most training and are traditionally among the hardest manufacturing jobs to find existing talent to fill."
Getting the workforce educated in key skills will be the catalyst that we need to really get manufacturing growing at a rate that we need to grow and sustain the economy.
1) Cheap U.S. natural gas and other increased energy production are helping to power U.S. factories more efficiently, with gas especially providing inexpensive raw materials for U.S. manufacturers of plastics, tires, certain pharmaceuticals and other petrochemical products.
2) Higher wages in China and other foreign export markets are making outsourcing less profitable to U.S. firms.
3) Congressional approval in 2011 of trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama and other agreements being negotiated now with Asia and Europe are promising to open more foreign markets to U.S. products.
4) Major technology advances have steadily boosted factory efficiency and worker productivity.
5) High U.S. unemployment is relieving pressure on factory owners to increase wages, helping to make U.S. labor costs more globally competitive.
Yet, while many industries are doing more with fewer workers, more than half a million new manufacturing jobs have been added in just the past few years. Now we just need to get our educational system in line with the manufacturing jobs being created.
U.S. manufacturing companies have as many as 600,000 jobs that they cannot find workers with the proper skills to fill, according to a survey by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute.
The survey found 5 percent of current manufacturing jobs are unfilled due to lack of qualified candidates, 67 percent of manufacturers have a moderate to severe shortage of qualified workers, and 56 percent expect the shortage to increase in the next three to five years.
"These unfilled jobs are mainly in the skilled production category — positions such as machinists, operators, craft workers, distributors and technicians," said Emily DeRocco, president of the Manufacturing Institute, part of the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington.
"Unfortunately, these jobs require the most training and are traditionally among the hardest manufacturing jobs to find existing talent to fill."
Getting the workforce educated in key skills will be the catalyst that we need to really get manufacturing growing at a rate that we need to grow and sustain the economy.
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