Strengthening the Manufacturing Workforce

While the manufacturing industry facing challenges in hiring the right people to fill the skills gap, warehouses and the trucking industry has increased their employment growth.

One of the challenges that the manufacturing industry is faced with is hiring a skilled and educated workforce that doesn’t have misperceptions that manufacturing is “dirty” or “dangerous”.

With new education programs, such as STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics), more of America’s youth is seeing how manufacturing jobs are now high tech and technology driven.

The manufacturing sector that has recently seen growth are warehousing companies. The Labor Department stated that 5,100 jobs were added in October due to the growing impact of e-commerce in logistics hiring.

Since June, warehousing and storage business have added over 18,000 jobs and 46,100 jobs over the past 12 months, according to WSJ.

Growing e-commerce sales has definitely impacted the warehouse sector and will continue to grow as the holiday season approaches.

Increased employment growth will also be seen in the trucking industry and logistics companies such as United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp.

Looking to hire more talent in your manufacturing company? The NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership centers can provide your company with a successful workforce development program to strengthen your hiring initiatives. Check out how NIST MEP can help you!