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Keeping American Jobs
The manufacturing industry has been a volatile one for the past few years. It has been dealing with the blowbacks of automated assembly lines, artificial intelligence development, and growing foreign manufacturing competition.
With major manufacturing companies seeing the writing on the wall, some have banded together to create an initiative that will not only preserve the American blue-collar sector but also build upon it with more skilled workers ready for the future needs of manufacturing.
Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades
Ford has just announced that it has joined forces with major companies, namely BlackRock, Google, and Carhartt. These companies are banding together to create the Alliance for America's Skilled Trades, a group concerned with addressing the shortage of skilled American workers.
Jim Farley, Ford's CEO, says that there are three main goals for this initiative: build a jobs pipeline for skilled workers, highlight what's working across the country, including the launch of a Skilled Trades Report, and grow this movement with more partners. In Ford's case, they've begun to address the issue by investing with Bloomberg Philanthropies to expand and modernize Detroit Public Schools’ auto tech training program.
Unfullfilled
The alliance is born from the big shifts in the global economy that have, in turn, evolved manufacturing needs and increased electrification across industries. All of that has contributed to a surge in demand for highly skilled workers to achieve the modern infrastructure push. In terms of true action, the alliance aims to make the pathways to training and apprenticeship for skilled jobs easier and more accessible. By also working with Burning Glass Institute and Jobs for the Future, they will launch the Skilled Trades Report to help measure gaps, track progress, and share best practices.
According to the alliance members, there is a chance that 2.1 million skilled trades jobs might be unfilled by 2030 without proper action. The 2.1 million is spread across multiple industries, sectors, and regions; according to some estimates, there will be a need for an additional 130,000 electrical workers by 2030, and more than 350,000 new auto technicians by 2029.
