Carolyn Lee

Manufacturers need to be driving the conversation and not hope that the workforce ecosystem just arrives and combat some of the fears that are out there that the robots are taking over and AI is taking over and there will be no more workers.

The jobs will change, but the workers will still be there.

What their jobs look like will be different.

And that's the thing that we need to help people understand.

So while we're having a lot of conversation right now nationally about reinvestment in manufacturing, of course, manufacturing never completely left.

We've been hovering around 13 million manufacturing employees for many years, and it's been ticking up actually since COVID.

And yet we still have a structural workforce challenge.

We do not have enough people with the skills we need to fill our jobs.

for some people.

They don't understand that these are great, well-paying jobs with upward mobility and lots of opportunity.

And so first and foremost, we have a public perception challenge that we need to address.

And that is something that we do each and every day at the Manufacturing Institute.

Our mission is to build and strengthen the manufacturing workforce for today and tomorrow.

the McKinsey team really helped us think about is the true opportunity for talent all across from existing talent pools, from untapped talent pools, and then where is the industry really going in these future years and where could we have the biggest impact by scaling our work?

Really, when it comes to workforce, there is no one workforce problem.

There are so many different levers.

And since COVID, it has been really this focus on retention and culture, which has to be very much front and center.

What is it that the next generations are looking for in order to come and to stay?

Because in the years past, the expectation was you'd come and start your career and you'd stay 40 years.

That was the baby boomer generation.