The U.S. is experiencing a factory-building boom as companies, burned by overstretched supply chains during the pandemic, reshore some of their operations, writes The Wall Street Journal (Dec. 12, 2023). The U.S. also has given priority to the nation’s semiconductor and EV industries, calling them matters of national security and setting aside billions of dollars in subsidies to aid their growth.
U.S. manufacturers have long struggled to find all the employees they need. The coming wave of megafactories, aided public incentives, is pushing the labor shortage into a crisis. The value of new manufacturing construction projects hit a record $102 billion last year, three times higher than 2019’s total. Since 2021, 33 manufacturing projects, most of them related to semiconductors or electric vehicles, have cost $1 billion or more.
More than half of the roughly 115,000 new positions expected to be created by the end of the decade could go unfilled, industry experts project. The anxiety is particularly acute in Central Ohio, where Intel is building two semiconductor plants at a combined cost of more than $20 billion, and Honda and LG Energy Solution are constructing a $3.5 billion electric-vehicle battery plant. The companies aim to hire more than 5,000 workers between them, and local suppliers that will serve the factories likely will need thousands more.
Will students be interested? Manufacturers have tried to chip away at negative perceptions through public-awareness campaigns. “This is a different type of manufacturing,” said one 27 year old who shook off bad experiences with a previous factory job. “This is super-educated, specially trained. There’s a lot on the line for this type of work.”
Intel said its manufacturing technicians in the U.S. can earn $50,000 to $90,000 a year.
Classroom discussion questions:
- What are your students attitudes towards factory jobs?
- Why are these positions different from traditional manufacturing jobs?