If manufacturing booms, will we have enough job-ready workers?

If the U.S. rebuilds its manufacturing base, how many American workers will be prepared to work in high-tech, high-paying factories? Robert Pondiscio worries that most workers coming out of high school won't have the reading and math skills needed to train for skilled trade jobs.

“There's going to be mechanics, there's going to be HVAC specialists, there's going to be electricians — the tradecraft of America,” said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on CBS’s Face the Nation. High school-educated Americans will see "the greatest resurgence of jobs in the history of America, to work on these high-tech factories, which are all coming to America."

Proposed defense spending will pump billions in to shipbuilding.

"Even before Trump took office, a 2024 report from Deloitte forecast a need for up to 3.8 million additional skilled manufacturing employees by 2033," Pondiscio writes. The report also predicted that "half of those could go unfilled if skills and applicant gaps go unaddressed."

Career Tech Education (CTE) is expanding, and helping young people enter the workforce, he writes. High school CTE “concentrators” (students who take multiple CTE courses) tend to outperform classmates in earnings and employment rates, and are much more likely to be earning above-poverty wages seven years after high school.

However, CTE programs don't always align with local job markets, Pondiscio writes. Furthermore, "only about five percent of CTE concentrators focus on manufacturing."

I think educators and parents see manufacturing as exclusively blue collar, and fields like health and business as giving students college options.

For all the worry about steering students away from college, many don't have the academic skills for college or for job training.

Those declining math scores are a "flashing warning light," Pondiscio writes. Robots do the repetitive jobs. "If three-quarters of our students can’t master middle school math," how will they learn to program the machines?

Manufacturers (and other employers) also need workers who will show up on time, work hard, stay focused, solve problems and so on, he points out. Many young people need to develop a strong work ethic at home or at school -- preferably both -- to be employable.

Better CTE isn't enough, concludes Pondiscio. "We’ll need to fix the academic foundations — math, literacy, problem-solving — that underpin technical skills. And we’ll need to cultivate a culture that values hard work and opportunity, not just credentials."

Jobs for the Future has launched the National Apprenticeship Fund to provide financial help to apprentices. There are lots of scholarships for college students, much less for people trying to complete job training.