Indiana Custom Machining: Keeping Up With Advanced Manufacturing

Earlier this year, the National Science and Technology Council sent the White House a report entitled A Snapshot of Priority Technology Areas Across the Federal Government. The report included a stark warning about the availability of skilled workers for one of the hottest growth sectors in the U.S.: advanced manufacturing.

“A vibrant manufacturing sector needs an equally vibrant workforce, educated in a multitude of fields from engineering to economics. These skilled craftsmen, technicians, designers, planners, researchers, engineers and managers will be in high demand: over the next decade, we will need to fill nearly 3.5 million manufacturing jobs, although 2 million of these positions may remain unfilled due to a skills gap,” declared Tom Kalil, deputy director for technology and innovation of the president’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, in his introduction to the report, which was forwarded to Congress.

At the present time, Kalil said, 80 percent of manufacturers currently report a moderate or serious shortage of qualified applicants for skilled and highly skilled production positions.

Manufacturing plays an outsized role in the U.S. economy: from the greatest economic multiplier of any other sector, to the creation of four additional jobs for every manufacturing job, it is clear that the manufacturing sector is a critical driver to our country’s prosperity and security. These economic impacts grow as we add next-generation technologies: advanced manufacturing produces sophisticated and exclusive products that we can sell around the world, leading to greater economic prosperity and increasing the job multiplier to 16-to-1.

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