by Henry Cialone, EWI President and CEO
I hear the same thing everywhere I go and from everyone I talk with — product demand in the manufacturing space is high and workforce supply is low. And all these anecdotes are backed up by the 2018 skills gap and future of work study. The study, produced by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute, includes these hard-hitting statistics:
- Job openings in manufacturing have been growing at double-digit rates since mid-2017 and are nearing the historical peak recorded in 2001.
- There may be an estimated 2.4 million positions that go unfilled between 2018 and 2028.
- The potential economic impact of these unfilled jobs may be as great as $2.5 trillion.
This industrywide workforce shortage didn’t just appear yesterday, and it won’t be solved tomorrow. But I’m seeing some approaches to addressing the problem that are worth mentioning…