US manufacturing’s next test: Building a workforce for a new era
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What is the current state of the US manufacturing workforce?
Welcome to McKinsey Talks Talent, featuring McKinsey leaders and talent experts, Brian Hancock and Brooke Weddle. I'm Lucia Rahilly.
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.
What challenges are preventing the manufacturing industry from attracting talent?
And that's the thing that we need to help people understand.
That's Carolyn Lee. She's the president and executive director at the Manufacturing Institute. Turns out there are lots of open jobs in manufacturing and not enough workers to fill the positions. And nowadays, the work environment is often bright, clean, and safe.
How can manufacturers reshape public perception of factory jobs?
So what's preventing the industry from attracting talent? Carolyn joins me, Brooke Bryan, and associate partner Tyler Freeman to talk about how to draw humans back to the factories. Welcome Brooke, Brian, Tyler, and Carolyn, a big crew today. So let's get going. Carolyn, let's start with some context.
What strategies are being discussed to address the skills gap in manufacturing?
The return of manufacturing to the U.S. is all over the headlines, but we do tend to think more about job loss than about job openings in factory work. Talk to us about that supply-demand mismatch in the U.S.
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.
How is technology impacting job roles in manufacturing?
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.
What role does flexibility play in attracting younger workers to manufacturing?
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.
So full disclosure, we at McKinsey partnered with you in helping to grapple with that talent shortage in U.S. manufacturing. And in fact, you collaborated with Tyler as part of that partnership.
How can collaboration among manufacturers enhance workforce development?
Tell us a bit about that work and specifically the impact that the Manufacturing Institute aspires to create.
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?
And when I approached Carolyn at the tail end of 2024, I think we both had a meeting of the minds that said, what we're doing today and the pace of change that's happening in the sector, whether it's through digital or AI automation, even the advent of Gen AI or agentic AI, and the impact that it's having on our shop floors of tomorrow was something that we felt was an inflection point for the MI to take a hard look at some of the things that they were focused on. Many of the folks in the sector really think about the number of open jobs, right, that exist today or the jobs that will exist in the future as we nearshore much of our industrial base. But what's interesting is if you unpack the actual true workforce need for our manufacturers, it encompasses a variety of different things, not just growth, but also why are people leaving and how to stem the tide there.
What is the future outlook for the manufacturing sector in the US?
We have to replace those workers as well in many instances. And then finally, you add in the upskilling or reskilling, and turns out the total addressable market of workers is two times what many people actually think is the true need of the manufacturing workforce.
Carolyn and Tyler, Governor Brian Kemp had a workforce summit in Georgia. They had one of the big manufacturers in Georgia say, if I don't get somebody interested in manufacturing by middle school, we've missed them.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the current state of the US manufacturing workforce?
0:03–0:31
2
What challenges are preventing the manufacturing industry from attracting talent?
0:31–0:51
3
How can manufacturers reshape public perception of factory jobs?
0:51–1:13
4
What strategies are being discussed to address the skills gap in manufacturing?
1:13–1:45
5
How is technology impacting job roles in manufacturing?
1:45–2:04
6
What role does flexibility play in attracting younger workers to manufacturing?
2:04–2:27
7
How can collaboration among manufacturers enhance workforce development?
2:27–3:41
8
What is the future outlook for the manufacturing sector in the US?
3:41–21:45