U.S. manufacturers add jobs with higher skill requirements

From 2015 to 2025, production-occupation jobs fell while management, business and financial-operations roles expanded

U.S. manufacturers have increased their head count by 72,000 since December, offering a sign of recovery after years of declining factory employment. The Wall Street Journal reported that the hiring increase is changing factory work: manufacturers are hiring more white-collar workers in management and business operations, while blue-collar roles increasingly require advanced training as factories become more automated and complex.

Automation is one factor behind the change. Between 2015 and 2025, U.S. manufacturers shed 244,000 production-occupation jobs, such as assemblers and machine operators, but added 358,000 jobs in management, business and financial operations, according to Labor Department data. Robots have replaced many shop-floor workers but not managers and engineers, increasing the share of factory employment held by those professional roles.

More automated operations also require workers to interpret sensors and data, identify potential problems and maintain robots. Binil Starly, director of Arizona State University’s School of Manufacturing Systems and Networks, said, “The kind of manufacturing that is returning back to the U.S. is not the same as what we used to have in the ’70s or ’80s or ’90s.” He described the new worker as “very technology-centric” and said, “Any factory you walk into right now, you just cannot function without at least an understanding of how these systems are operational.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that higher-skill jobs tend to pay better, create greater profits for employers and boost growth. That upside comes with a workforce risk: companies could face a skilled-worker shortage if training programs do not keep pace with the changing jobs.

Susan Houseman, an economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute of Employment Research, said higher-skill jobs often involve less “drudgery and mind-numbing tasks” than the assembly-line work of past decades. Susan Helper, an economist at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, said, “What I worry about is the access to good jobs.” Helper said the era when people could leave high school and go directly into a factory is increasingly over.

Swift Coat, a Phoenix-based startup that makes antireflective coated glass for satellites, plans to hire two or three workers by the end of the year at its facility in an industrial park in northern Phoenix. All of the positions require an engineering degree. Swift uses highly complex machinery to turn tiny particles called nanomaterials into antireflective coating, which can help make satellite-powered solar panels more effective, among other applications.

The startup’s seven-person full-time staff includes a physics Ph.D., two people with master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and one with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, CEO Peter Firth said. The staff run computer simulations, analyze data, design equipment and test the coating. Three shop-floor technicians handle and inspect samples; one has an associate degree, another spent some time in college, and the technicians are experienced.

Firth explained why the company still seeks experienced operators even when equipment is functioning properly: “If everything is working perfectly, I could pull my mom in and she could do the work,” he said. “But we hire people in those roles to prevent and to identify problems. So you really want someone that has the right type of experience to be able to do that effectively.”

Swift is investing in a new, highly automated assembly line that will use robots to load and unload samples while one or two workers monitor the process. Firth said the company might hire one technician and two engineers, who would be paid more, instead of five technicians. “We’re not necessarily spending less on people,” he said.

The shift differs by industry. Older sectors such as furniture making are shrinking, while knowledge-intensive sectors including aerospace, computers, electrical equipment and heating and cooling systems have added workers this year. In airplane manufacturing, more than half of workers have at least a bachelor’s degree, according to the Census Bureau. Semiconductor makers are more likely to hire college graduates than other manufacturers, according to a LinkedIn analysis.

Companies and industry groups are racing to expand training in response to concern about skilled-worker shortages. SME, a manufacturing trade group, employs around 125 people in its workforce development division and sends equipment such as drone-coding kits and 3-D printers to middle schools to encourage interest in factory work. “Technology is now outpacing our people,” SME CEO Jeannine Kunz said. “There’s not a manufacturing sector that’s not starving for talent.”

In Mesa, Arizona, Arizona State University’s school of manufacturing is training around 170 people to become equipment technicians for Taiwanese chip maker TSMC’s fast-growing Arizona plant and plans to increase that number to 800 next year. The school, founded five years ago, also has around 370 students studying for bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees.

Aspyr Workforce Innovation, a Columbus, Ohio-based workforce development organization launched a decade ago when factory work was not as much of a focus, shifted toward manufacturing training in recent years as more advanced industry moved to the region. CEO Lisa Patt-McDaniel said local training programs are currently able to keep up with demand from companies and workers, but that capacity may be strained if industry keeps growing. Chip maker Intel has announced plans for two factories with a combined 3,000 workers east of the city. “Right now we’re good,” Patt-McDaniel said. “Call me in two years and we’ll see where we’re at.”