Can American manufacturing make a comeback?

This com­men­tary was writ­ten by Heather Close and first pub­lished by The Rural Blog, a digest of events, trends, issues, ideas, and jour­nal­ism from and about rur­al America, by the Institute for Rural Journalism, based at the University of Kentucky.

Moving the man­u­fac­tur­ing of any prod­uct back to the U.S. is an expen­sive and iffy gam­ble that can take years to bring into fruition. For many com­pa­nies, the idea of reshoring labor-inten­sive indus­tries isn’t even on the table because the nation does­n’t have enough skilled trade work­ers to staff fac­to­ry floors.

Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley “point­ed out on a pod­cast last week that he can’t find enough skilled mechan­ics to run his auto plants. Specifically, Ford can’t fill 5,000 mechan­ic jobs that pay $120,000 a year,” writes The Wall Street Journal edi­to­r­i­al board.

“We are in trou­ble in our coun­try. We are not talk­ing about this enough,” Farley told Monica Langley of the “Office Hours” pod­cast. “We have over a mil­lion open­ings in crit­i­cal jobs, emer­gency ser­vices, truck­ing, fac­to­ry work­ers, plumbers, elec­tri­cians and tradesmen.”

For decades, American youth have been influ­enced to attend col­lege rather than trade schools through gov­ern­ment-spon­sored finan­cial sup­port and cul­tur­al influ­ences that push col­lege degrees as a pre­req­ui­site for suc­cess, even when a trade pro­fes­sion might be a bet­ter fit. “This has cre­at­ed a skills mis­match in the labor mar­ket,” the board adds. “Unemployment among young col­lege grads is increas­ing, while employ­ers strug­gle to hire skilled man­u­fac­tur­ing work­ers, tech­ni­cians and contractors.”

When grad­u­ate num­bers are com­pared, the extreme short­age of skilled work­ers becomes clear. “Only 114,000 Americans in their 20s com­plet­ed voca­tion­al pro­grams dur­ing the first 10 months of last year, com­pared to 1.24 mil­lion who grad­u­at­ed from four-year col­leges and 405,000 who received advanced degrees,” the board writes.

A lack of skilled work­ers even­tu­al­ly costs con­sumers more mon­ey. “An American whose F‑150 truck breaks down will still have to pay more at the repair shop owing to the mechan­ic short­age,” the board explains. “Steering every high school stu­dent toward col­lege is doing tan­gi­ble harm to the labor mar­ket — and the young.”