The investment commitments to rebuilding the U.S. manufacturing base are huge.
One current estimate puts more than $2 trillion in U.S. mega-projects on the board—roughly double the level two years ago and about 10 times the announced spending five years ago.
Let’s put $2 trillion into perspective.
$2 trillion = $2,000 billion.
That’s theoretically enough money to finance 2,000 projects costing $1 billion each.
These include semiconductor fabs, battery plants, advanced manufacturing facilities, AI/data centers, energy projects and related infrastructure.
Now look at the other end of the American economy.
Small businesses employ approximately 63 million Americans—45.9% of the private-sector workforce—and generate about 43.5% of U.S. GDP.
Here’s another way to understand a trillion dollars:
$1 trillion could theoretically build 100,000 new $10 million businesses
Big or small…
We’ve got a problem.
Actually, we’ve got two:
1. Who’s going to build all this stuff?
2. Once it’s built, who’s going to make all this stuff?
WORKFORCE #1: BUILDING THE STUFF
New industrial projects require electricians, welders, pipefitters, plumbers, HVAC technicians, millwrights, heavy-equipment operators, construction workers, engineers and construction managers.
And America already needs enormous numbers of them.
Projected annual U.S. job openings include approximately:
Electricians: 81,000
Industrial machinery mechanics, maintenance workers and millwrights: 54,200
Welders: 45,600
HVAC technicians: 40,100
That’s approximately:
220,900 OPENINGS EVERY YEAR
in just those four occupational groups.
And that doesn’t include plumbers, pipefitters, engineers, equipment operators and many of the other people required to construct industrial facilities.
America can build a major plant. We’ve proven that.
One $5 billion plant can employ thousands of construction workers and eventually recruit and train thousands of permanent employees.
But imagine 50, 100 or 200 major projects all trying to do that during roughly the same period.
They’re all looking for electricians, welders, pipefitters, engineers, technicians and construction managers from overlapping labor pools.
And here’s the part we sometimes forget:
A lot of those people already have jobs.
Many work for the small and midsize businesses that employ nearly half of America’s private-sector workforce.
So creating millions of jobs isn’t necessarily the hard part.
Creating millions of additional qualified workers is.
WORKFORCE #2: MAKING THE STUFF
This may eventually be the bigger problem.
Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute estimate that American manufacturing could require as many as:
3.8 MILLION WORKERS BETWEEN 2024 AND 2033.
And as many as:
1.9 MILLION OF THOSE JOBS COULD GO UNFILLED
if the skills and applicant gaps aren’t solved.
Where does that enormous need come from?
Roughly:
2.8 million — replacing workers aging out of the workforce
760,000 — jobs resulting from industry expansion
230,000 — jobs resulting from recent investment, reshoring, infrastructure and technology policies
America isn’t merely trying to create a new manufacturing workforce.
It also has to replace a huge retiring workforce at the same time.
THE IRONY
We’ve spent years asking:
“How do we bring manufacturing back to America?”
Now we’re spending enormous amounts of money doing exactly that.
And we may discover that bringing the factories back was the easy part.
Because factories don’t manufacture anything by themselves.
People do.
Or at least people operate, program, maintain and repair the increasingly automated machines that do.
So maybe America’s next major infrastructure program shouldn’t just be about concrete, steel, semiconductor plants and billion-dollar factories.
Maybe it needs to be about:
Trade schools. Apprenticeships. Community colleges. Technical training.
And getting young people interested in manufacturing again.
Because you can announce a billion-dollar factory tomorrow.
You can buy the land.
You can pour the concrete.
You can install the robots.
But eventually somebody has to know how to wire the building, operate the equipment and fix the robot when it stops working.
Great News—America Is Building Trillions of Dollars of New Industrial Capacity.
Anybody know an electrician?
