Bridging the Manufacturing Labor Gap
Strategies to Overcome Workforce Shortages and Unlock Growth Potential
The manufacturing industry faces unprecedented labor challenges. AFIMAC’s position paper explores strategic solutions to help manufacturers overcome workforce shortages, enhance resilience, and unlock growth potential.
What's Inside
- Origins of the manufacturing labor gap
- Short-term and long-term workforce solutions
- Strategies for critical labor situations
Over the course of several decades, an emphasis on offshoring, automation and consolidation shrank the need for domestic manufacturing labor. Manufacturing employment as of September 2024 (12.9MM employees) is down nearly 38% from a peak of 20.7MM employees in 1989. The resultant, aggregate reduction of available manufacturing jobs left trained, tenured laborers with few viable options for employment without retraining, relocation or both. Many left manufacturing permanently.
