DECATUR — With millions of new manufacturing jobs needing to be filled by the end of the decade, industry leaders are looking to recruit the next generation of creators.
A group of local middle and high school students were brought to Richland Community College on Monday to experience the Creators Wanted Tour, a partnership between the Manufacturing Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association.
The tour aims to promote manufacturing careers to young people, especially in manufacturing hubs like Decatur.
“Manufacturers and their teams have a major challenge,” Manufacturing Institute President Carolyn Lee said on Monday. “There are just under 800,000 new jobs manufacturing in the U.S. right now, and our research shows that the industry will need to build more than four million by the end of the decade.”
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Students had the opportunity to hear from manufacturing leaders, meet representatives from multiple Decatur manufacturers — including event partners Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Caterpillar Inc. — and even take part in a manufacturing-themed escape room.
A nationwide effort, the tour has stopped in just 12 communities across the country. Decatur was chosen because of how integral manufacturing is to the local economy, said Illinois Manufacturers’ Association President and CEO Mark Denzler.
“Fifty percent of Macon County's economy comes from manufacturing,” he said. “Half of all our economic activity in this county is directly related to manufacturing, the single highest share of any county in Illinois.”
Decatur students are “the future of manufacturing,” Denzler said.
Some tour leaders also expressed their desire to recruit skilled and educated laborers from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in the manufacturing sector.
“Not everyone has the perspective of or has heard from someone who looks like me, or is from the same place,” said Veronica Braker, ADM senior vice president of Global Operations.
As a woman of color, Braker said she wanted to help the group of primarily Black students “see themselves in careers within manufacturing.”
“This is an underrepresented community,” Braker, who has a background in chemical engineering and over 25 years of experience in operations leadership, said after the event. “These jobs are rewarding. It offers (students) the opportunity to build the lives for themselves and their families that they want.”
Manufacturers’ workforces should reflect the demographics of the communities they serve, Braker said.
Preventing brain drain and encouraging students to stay in Decatur and Macon County are key to strengthening local workforces, Denzler said. One way he hopes to make local manufacturing jobs more attractive is by reshaping the public’s preconceived notions of what those jobs actually look like.
“It could be someone on the production floor, it can be in engineering, it can be marketing communications, admin,” Denzler said. “We have to change that perception of belching smokestacks, that manufacturing is dark, dirty and dangerous. It's not. Manufacturers, they are clean and sustainable and high tech and diverse.”
While wrapping up his comments to students on Monday, Jay Timmons, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, said manufacturers all over the world help create ways to “make life better.” The students in the room, he said, might one day be able to do the same.
“We cannot wait to see how you change the future,” he said.
More community members will have the chance to learn about manufacturing opportunities in Decatur as the Creators Wanted Tour will be hosted at Richland through Wednesday.
What manufacturing workers make in every state
What manufacturing workers make in every state
Manufacturing has long been one of the United States' most common occupations. During what can be thought of as the golden age of manufacturing in America, tens of millions of Americans were employed in manufacturing everything from food to furniture to factory production parts. By June of 1979, a year the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded as the peak for the number of people employed in the sector, 19.6 million Americans were engaged in manufacturing work.
Forty years later, that number reduced to 12.8 million. This represents a full 35% drop from 1979, with 6.7 million fewer Americans holding down manufacturing jobs. This decline can be attributed to a number of factors. Chief among these is technology, with many manufacturing jobs being automated using machines. Another primary factor is outsourcing, in which many factories have relocated overseas, where workers typically complete the same work for lower wages.
Between 2020-2021, the COVID-19 pandemic also had a significant impact on manufacturing, forcing many businesses to shutter for a time and causing significant supply chain disruptions to ensue. Labor shortages are forcing some manufacturers to raise wages to compete with other industries like hospitality that draw from the same employee pool.
Although manufacturing in the U.S. isn't what it used to be, there are still plenty of Americans engaged in manufacturing work. And for those who do trade in everything from woodwork to tailoring to welding, many wages are paid by the hour. But not all manufacturing workers are paid the same, with differences not only according to profession but geographic region as well.
Get It Made used Bureau of Labor Statistics data to find the median hourly wage of manufacturing workers in every state across the U.S. The analysis includes all roles that BLS classifies as "production occupations," which range widely, from food production manufacturing to machining.
Read on for a look at how manufacturing wages compare in various states across America.
Manufacturing workers tend to make less in the South
Manufacturers have many different types of occupations, and so, too, do they make different wages. Those in the South tend to pay the lowest salaries across the board, with the median hourly wages falling beneath the national median wage of $18.13. Wages in much of the country fall somewhere between paying $18 and $22 an hour. But a few notable states are outliers, paying above $22 per hour. These states are not geographically clustered but instead have other factors explaining their higher wages—such as a recent oil and gas boom in North Dakota or the need to pay slightly higher wages to draw skilled workers from the lower 48 states to Alaska.
Here are highlights of the manufacturing industry in the four highest-paying states.
Wyoming
- Median hourly wage for manufacturing: $23.59
- Number of manufacturing employees: 11,770
- Manufacturing employment per 1,000 jobs: 45
Alaska
- Median hourly wage for manufacturing: $22.81
- Number of manufacturing employees: 9,630
- Manufacturing employment per 1,000 jobs: 33
North Dakota
- Median hourly wage for manufacturing: $22.56
- Number of manufacturing employees: 22,200
- Manufacturing employment per 1,000 jobs: 56
Washington
- Median hourly wage for manufacturing: $22.38
- Number of manufacturing employees: 158,120
- Manufacturing employment per 1,000 jobs: 49
Note: The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects this data by surveying employers, and like all survey data these numbers come with a margin of sampling error. Due to that margin of error, Connecticut and Hawaii manufacturing workers could potentially make the same or more as those in Washington state. Both states also had median wages above $22 per hour.
This story originally appeared on Get It Made and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
