The Story behind the campaign
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) started to hear from its members that, despite layoffs during the last recession, manufacturers were still having trouble attracting employees with the right mix of skills in certain job functions to meet the demands of modern manufacturing.
To learn more, NAM and Deloitte & Touche conducted extensive quantitative and qualitative research across the U.S. The findings?
We learned that an estimated 80 percent of manufacturers reported a "moderate to serious" shortage of qualified job applicants during the recent recession – a problem only growing increasingly urgent with the increase in global competition and retirement of Baby Boomers. The research also found that manufacturing has an outdated image filled with stereotypes of assembly line jobs that has kept young people from pursuing careers in this sector.
The campaign was created because we know that these perceptions are seriously out of step with manufacturing's broad range of interesting and financially rewarding careers-like an electrical engineer for a private jet manufacturer, product developer for a candy manufacturing plant, or a designer at an MP3 manufacturing company.
To learn more about the research that led to this campaign, download one of the following reports:
