Manufacturing is one of the modern world’s most important industries and a major employer of skilled trade workers. However, employers still struggle to fill open roles in their clean, modern manufacturing facilities. This is ironic given that many roles in this vital sector don’t require a four-year college degree in order to get started on a career path with good wages and upward mobility.
Even with this amazing combination — a vital industry, lots of job openings, and no college degree requirement for many — the problem of helping students and job seekers from pools of undiscovered talent get into these roles won’t solve itself. Like every other human endeavor worth doing, it’ll take a combination of technology, relationships, and dedication to solve.
This robust infographic about manufacturing in the US is a handy guide to some of the amazing opportunities available in the manufacturing industry, including open roles by state across ten spotlight states, starting salaries, and projected earnings in four years. There’s also a collection of stories from organizations in those states that are working hard to connect students and job seekers with the training they need to secure well-paying jobs in their areas and provide for themselves and their families. It all ties together into a story of opportunity, education, and empowerment — one that’s being supercharged right now with the use of VR career exploration and AR technology.
Huge opportunities in the manufacturing space
The recent upsurge in job openings at manufacturers of all kinds is a huge opportunity for students and job seekers of all kinds. According to [SOURCE], there will be almost 300,000 open roles in the manufacturing industry, in the US as a whole, by 2025. These roles encompass a wide array of focus areas across the entire manufacturing process and in a variety of industries — manufacturing isn’t just one type of facility or one type of experience.
In the Return of Manufacturing in the United States infographic, the four manufacturing jobs highlighted are maintenance/repair technicians, assemblers, welders, and machinists. By 2025, there will be almost 300,000 open roles in these categories. All these careers offer strong starting salaries without college degrees and career paths with upward mobility.
The spotlight states (Arkansas, Alabama, Texas, etc.) all represent places where manufacturing is surging back in a big way. Organizations and employers there have committed to helping build a strong talent pipeline to provide skilled, engaged workers for these vital roles.
Building buzz for manufacturing with VR career exploration and AR experiences
To fill this flood of job openings and keep the engine of manufacturing humming along, educators, employers, and workforce boards (as well as other community organizations, like the Boys & Girls Club) need to start building buzz about these jobs. Part of building that buzz and making manufacturing and the skilled trades cool, especially for younger people, will require changing people’s perceptions of what these careers entail and what modern manufacturing workplaces are like:
“It’s important to change the optics of what manufacturing looks like today,” Sarah says. “It’s no longer dark, dirty, and dangerous. It’s clean, sustainable, high tech diverse... And if you visit a shop floor today, with the mindset that it’s dark, dirty, and dangerous — you will be blown away. It’s incredible.”
Partners in progress: Organizations building the future of manufacturing
In addition to displaying the vast number of job opportunities in different manufacturing roles, this interactive map also links out to a variety of inspiring customer stories from Transfr partners in these spotlight states. In Florida, AmSkills uses their mobile career bootcamps to bring VR headsets and support teams directly to communities where transportation is a serious challenge. This combination of high technology and human ingenuity is opening doors and helping connect people with opportunities in their areas.
“One of the problems in society today is that there’s little to no chance to explore different careers,” says AmSkills CEO Tom Mudano. “How can someone know if they want to be a machinist or work in robotics? The AmSkills Career Discovery Bootcamps allow them to explore these different careers in manufacturing and the Transfr system allows us to provide even more opportunity to show other careers that we might not be able to provide in the program otherwise.”
Likewise, in Alabama, West Alabama Works is helping students explore careers with VR headset in their Worlds of Work events. Students from all across their service area come together for host of job readiness activities. Since deploying Transfr, these schools have seen a market uptick in CTE enrollment— 18 percent!
“This program is creating 5-star recruits,” says Donny Jones, COO West Alabama Works. “Teachers are empowered and engaged, students are better qualified and ready for success on day one. Students with a higher academic achievement rate are being attracted to industry — creating leaders of the future — and more kids are staying in the community because of local, well-paying jobs.”
With the right combination of caring, dedicated human teams and technology, including VR career exploration and VR skills training headsets, the potential for change is immense. Dig into this detailed infographic and explore more amazing stories and opportunities.
Want to learn more about the return of manufacturing in the USA?
Explore this interactive infographic!
