AMERICAN FACTORY WORKER - Articles

• Article from a Q4 2011 Deloitte Report in conjunction with The Manufacturing Institute

"American manufacturing companies cannot fill as many as 600,000 skilled positions – even as unemployment numbers hover at historic levels – according to a new survey from Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute.

The survey, “Boiling Point? The skills gap in U.S. manufacturing,” polled a nationally representative sample of 1,123 executives at manufacturing companies recently and revealed that 5 percent of current manufacturing jobs are unfilled due to a lack of qualified candidates."

I have seen this skills gap first hand, and it is only going to get worse as skilled workers retire in the next decade.

• Article in strategy+business "Manufacturing's Wake-Up Call"

"A series of identifiable smart actions and choices by business leaders, educators, and policymakers could lead to a robust, manufacturing-driven economic future and push that figure up to 95 percent. Alternatively, if the U.S. manufacturing sector remains neglected, its output could fall by half, meeting less than 40 percent of the nation’s demand, and U.S. manufacturing capabilities could then erode past the point of no return."