Manufacturing’s workforce challenge is to get to the other side, to a promising future where graduates from the trade and higher education flash skills that match the workforce needs of a modern, high-tech industry. We’re not there yet, but the fruits of a decade of workforce advocacy, diminishing returns from university degrees, tech-industry malaise, a […]
U.S. importers are today deciding they can’t afford to manufacture offshore. A Bain & Company study echoed others and found that “81% of 166 CEOs and COOs surveyed have plans to bring supply chains closer to market, an increase of 18 percentage points since 2022.” The same Bain study also found that “only 2% of […]
Here’s what’s ahead for U.S. manufacturing this year — and my scorecard from 2024: Best (old) quote from 2024: “…It is necessary for the prime contractor to provide on-site quality, supplier-management, and sometimes technical support. If this is not done, the performance of the prime manufacturer can never exceed the capabilities of the least proficient […]
Four years ago I wrote that in the regional competition between the Rocky Mountain look-alikes to attract manufacturing business and economy, the outcome would likely come down to Utah’s workforce advantage vs. Colorado’s “high-velocity food and beverage business.” Today, the big news is Utah’s success. By the numbers, Utah is a manufacturing juggernaut. A study […]
Arizona manufacturing is having a moment. And like every state grabbing for a piece of America’s industrial comeback, leaders here are grappling with one challenge above all others: workforce. Last week manufacturing and education leaders convened in Phoenix at the Arizona Manufacturing Summit to assess the current state of manufacturing employment and forecast the path […]
Food manufacturing is America’s great but underappreciated industrial success story, a tale of workforce growth fueled by innovation that’s even more impressive considering the full-tilt automation underway throughout the sector. Against a tide of robotics, job growth in food continues to be a highlight: But as much as innovation has been a catalyst, […]
America’s craft brewers would have been forgiven earlier this month for looking awry at a recurring headline in the Wall St. Journal: Why the Recession Still Isn’t Here might continue to describe macro conditions, but for much of the local suds industry, a deep downturn — a beer recession — has been a harsh reality […]
The state of US manufacturing is a mixed bag. There are plenty of positives. Total US manufacturing employment is poised to exceed 13 million workers for the first time since December 2008. (Manufacturing employment peaked in 1979, at just under 20 million.) Overall, the economy has added 800,000 or so net manufacturing jobs during President […]
America’s precision machinists are searching for balance. On one hand, the business of contract manufacturing has become a lowest-cost, shortest lead-time proposition (read how, in space procurement). On the other hand, when provided room to operate, companies are leaning-in to engineering, to design-to-manufacture, to an operating ethos that values quality and acumen and technology and […]
US manufacturing ebbs and flows across multiple industries. For communities intent on matching economic assets with emerging opportunities, the future is bright. Sometime in April, if it hasn’t happened already, US manufacturing employment will surge past 13 million total jobs for the first time since November 2008. Back then, manufacturing was in a free fall […]