Tag Archive for: Skills Gap

Workers in a manufacturing plant engaging in a teamwork exercise to improve communication skills.

The Growing Soft Skills Problem in Manufacturing

Many companies struggle to find workers with the right soft skills. These include communication, critical thinking, teamwork, and work ethic—essential for success in manufacturing.

According to a recent Cengage/Morning Consult survey, 75% of employers say new workers lack these important skills. This leads to longer training times, slower production, and mistakes on the job.

But there’s good news! Manufacturers can train workers and partner with schools to close this skills gap.

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Attracting Future Generations of US Manufacturing Workers

We’ve got a real problem on our hands in America. A gap’s growing between US manufacturing workers set to retire in the next 10 to 15 years and those on the other end of the spectrum. Despite the exciting and innovative things happening in the industry, millennials’ outdated perception of shop-floor jobs increasingly precludes them from following the career path. And Gen-Z, thumb deep in their smartphones, face an even more significant disconnect. Read more

jobs of today need vocational school training and not a college degree

At a steel factory dwarfed by the adjacent Auto Club Speedway, Fernando Esparza is working toward his next promotion.

Esparza is a 46-year-old mechanic for Evolution Fresh, a subsidiary of Starbucks that makes juices and smoothies. He’s taking a class in industrial computing taught by a community college at a local manufacturing plant in the hope it will bump up his wages. Read more

Skills Gap, Small Town America's Newest Product: Advanced Manufacturing, Made in USA, American Made, Factory Jobs, AI, Artificial Intelligence

Most of us, regardless of our age, have heard the song popularized by Sophie Tucker and Eddie Cantor after World War I: “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree?).” Read more

The Advanced Manufacturing Landscape: How Veterans are Saving the Day, workshop for warriors, veterans, skillsgap, manufacturing, jobs

Advanced manufacturing is already one of the most in-demand industries in America due to workforce retirements and natural business growth, but it’s also an industry with a severe shortage of skilled workers. Read more

Why We Desperately Need To Bring Back Vocational Training In Schools

Throughout most of U.S. history, American high school students were routinely taught vocational and job-ready skills along with the three Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. Indeed readers of a certain age are likely to have fond memories of huddling over wooden workbenches learning a craft such as woodwork or maybe metal work, or any one of the hands-on projects that characterized the once-ubiquitous shop class. Read more

2017 HR and Recruiting Report

The Made in America Movement reached out to 25,000+ HR professionals and 17,000+ executives for our 2017 HR and Recruiting Survey. Thank you to all recruiters, HR professionals and executives that participated in our 2017 survey. We could not provide such an incredible resource without your continued support.

2017 HR and Recruiting Report - download pdfMAM created this year’s survey to find out how much productivity and financial waste was occurring due to traditional interviewing processes. The 2017 report dives deeply into the questions and facts organizations need to ask to hire the best efficiently.

If you participated in the survey, you should receive an email with the report summary at no charge. If you are just finding out about the report, please click here to download the 2017 HR and Recruiting Report summary.


Thank you to our partner TopPick, the New Digital Interview Kit, for supporting the 2017 survey. This year’s effort was a huge undertaking for the MAM team. We reached out to more than 42,000 professionals at thousands of companies across America. These companies included high-growth 30 person teams to companies with 2,000+ employees from industries including B2B Services, B2B SAAS, hospitality, consulting and more. It’s great to see the next generation of technology not supporting MAM but also being built in Atlanta.

Aging workforce putting strain on skilled manufacturing workers, Made in USA, American made matters, Made in America

General Electric runs two plants in a small New Hampshire town just south of the state’s capital, employing 800 workers. GE Aviation is the largest employer in town, with skilled workers building jet engines for the world’s major airlines, reports ABC News. Read more

Made In America: $75 Million Grant Helps Students Gain Technical Skills Employers Need

When you back up a commitment with $75 million, people tend to pay attention. I’m certainly paying attention to New Skills for Youth (NSFY), the $75 million grant initiative sponsored by JPMorgan Chase to change the way we approach career and technical education in the U.S. Read more

Does America Really Need Manufacturing?

Too many American companies base decisions about how to source manufacturing largely on narrow financial criteria, never taking into account the potential strategic value of domestic locations. Proposals for plants are treated like any other investment proposal and subjected to strict return hurdles. Tax, regulatory, intellectual property, and political considerations may also figure heavily in the conversation. But executives, viewing manufacturing mainly as a cost center, give short shrift to the impact that outsourcing or offshoring it may have on a company’s capacity to innovate. Indeed, most don’t consider manufacturing to be part of a company’s innovation system at all. Read more