How to Rebuild America’s Manufacturing Workforce
Our interview subjects offered a variety of frequently differing perspectives on the career journeys of American youth. Yet, nearly all our subjects agreed that waiting until the actual job search process to begin thinking about career paths and skills alignment was far too late. Several of them echoed the feelings of one community college student interviewed: “[I wish I knew that] everything you do as a child and a teenager and a young adult reflects on what’s going to happen to you in your adult career.” A survey of recent four- and two-year college graduates led by McKinsey & Company and Chegg confirms this feeling: Over half of all graduates surveyed expressed regrets about their education choices, saying they would pick a different major or school if they had an opportunity to start over.29 Therefore, we argue that it is not enough to attempt to reach learners while they are looking for jobs post-graduation. Instead, efforts to impact career pathways decision-making in youth must start from the very beginning of a young person’s journey to employment, as represented by the following stages: 1 A student’s initial exploration of career opportunities, including opportunities in their region, via speaking with mentors, viewing educational content and gaining exposure to various careers via the classroom, independent research, and in other ways. For this part of a young person’s journey, we aim to answer the following question: Why don’t more young people choose to pursue careers in advanced manufacturing?
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“ [I wish I knew that] everything you do as a child and a teenager and a young adult reflects on what’s going to happen to you in your adult career” A community college student 2 The “skilling up” process every young person goes through in order to receive the necessary skills. This process could involve postsecondary training through local colleges, workstudy opportunities (e.g., apprenticeships), online training, and other means. For this part of the process, we aim to answer this question: Why aren’t regional education and training programs providing enough skilled workers, in alignment with regional demand? We explicitly do not address the job-finding aspect of the career journey in this report; to wait until the final stages of a job-seeker’s journey to intervene may be too late! Instead, we argue that focusing on the early stages of this journey is most critical to engaging youth.