Whatever it is young people are passionate about, be it cars or computers or music or even art, they can find a great career doing it in today's advanced manufacturing companies. Manufacturing is the process of “how a thought becomes a thing.” Yet, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) started to hear from its members that, despite layoffs during the last recession, manufacturers were still having trouble attracting employees with the right mix of skills in certain job functions to meet the demands of modern manufacturing.
To learn more, NAM and Deloitte & Touche conducted extensive quantitative and qualitative research across the U.S.
The findings?
We learned that an estimated 80 percent of manufacturers reported a "moderate to serious" shortage of qualified job applicants during the recent recession—a problem only growing increasingly urgent with the increase in global competition and retirement of Baby Boomers. The research also found that manufacturing has an outdated image filled with stereotypes of assembly line jobs that has kept young people from pursuing careers in this sector.
Will County’s CED independently held focus groups across all of Will County. While the local focus groups' results confirmed NAM’s findings, they also illuminated that there is “an overwhelmingly across the board, lack of awareness about careers in manufacturing and distribution.”
Dream !t Do !t® was created because we know that these perceptions are seriously out of step with manufacturing's broad range of interesting and financially rewarding careers—like a product developer for a candy manufacturing plant, a designer at a MP3 or a cell phone manufacturing company or an industrial designer whose product designs are reducing the waste in landfills. And we know that these career options can provide the relevancy today’s students need for learning. Advanced manufacturing (engineering, innovating, designing, building, creating) career goals can motivate students towards science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) coursework.
