Gen Z needs exposure to manufacturing careers as white-collar jobs look more prone to AI disruption—and student debt piles up

I was visiting a vendor of mine in Cape Coral, Florida, and was introduced by my representative, Steve, to a bright nineteen-year-old named Brandon. I learned he was recommended to my vendor by a trade school after only attending the school for four months. I watched as Brandon simultaneously ran three separate CNC machines that cost more than $500,000. Brandon told me he had one child and another on the way. Steve told me Brandon makes a base salary of $60,000 a year; gets two weeks’ vacation, a 401(k), and health care; but, more importantly, he can work all the overtime he wants because good workers like him are hard to find. Steve estimated Brandon pulled in $80,000 in his first year. At nineteen years old.

There ought to be an economic study tracking people on the two different American life paths—the college life path and the manufacturing life path—to see which group comes out financially ahead (and with less debt) after thirty years. Up to the early 2000s, the college path would undoubtedly have come out ahead financially, but times have changed. One manufacturing life path result could be a case study of someone like Brandon, who started life with no debt. As he builds work experience, he accrues an in-demand skill set that he can take anywhere in the world. There is no end to the skill sets you can learn in the manufacturing industry. The more tangible skill sets you learn, the more money you earn. Of course, manufacturing is a merit-based pathway. It is for individuals who want to learn new things, who are self-motivated, who have attention to detail and do not slop tasks. I have seen the people who settle, who do not want to learn anything new. These people are stuck on the same lathe they started operating twenty years ago.

On the other hand, the college life path case study can easily careen into debt. Someone gets a general marketing, communications, or business college degree and joins the workforce with no defined skill set and college debt. He works as an unpaid or low-paid intern to acquire experience, pushing out his debt repayment. His earnings timeline starts years later than someone on the manufacturing life path, and, as he ages, he will likely give up much of the higher salary he may get to normal life expenses like getting married, having children, paying rent, and getting cars, all possibly adding further to his debt burden. I should mention here, by the way, that in the next few decades, artificial intelligence is more likely to replace white-collar jobs than it is to replace someone with a tangible skill set like an electrician, plumber, CNC machine repair technician, or tool and die maker.

Which life path starts an eighteen-year-old off from a place of financial strength rather than a financial negative? Which life path is more likely to swiftly lead a person to financial freedom? Which path makes the strongest American families when the number one cause of marital issues after infidelity is financial stress, usually from debt? Which path creates a stronger nation?

My engineering manager, Shawn, started off in a shop on a lathe at age eighteen and had three kids. He could have stayed on the lathe for the rest of his life. But he asked to be taught the intricacies of operating more machines, thus increasing his value as an employee and raising his pay ceiling. He learned AutoCAD 3D design at night of his own volition. He got certified in complex gear design on his own initiative. And he was rewarded by being named engineering manager of a fifty-employee aerospace machine shop—even though he did not have a formal engineering degree. He makes six figures and has worked on the Lockheed F-35 program, among many other prestigious jobs. All because of his personal drive to learn more skill sets.

More bright, hardworking people fresh out of high school could follow the paths I just outlined if they only knew about them. The American public school system should reinstate manufacturing technology basics as a requirement in the sophomore year of high school, with the option to choose it as an elective for junior and senior years. This first-year sophomore primer must focus on sparking their minds and getting them excited about all the possibilities the manufacturing pathway offers and how far industry has come. We must show them that the workplace they will be entering is clean and at the tip of the spear technologically and positions them to be a part of the fourth industrial revolution, not the first. They will not be entering a foreboding factory billowing black smoke six days a week, twelve hours a day. This was the industry of the past, not today. But our kids have not been presented the industry of today. Today’s manufacturing environment is deeply connected to robotics, AI, data analytics, and the Internet of Things.

Of course, to fully understand the present, they must understand the past. It could be useful for them to read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair or to discuss the deplorable conditions depicted in How the Other Half Lives by Jacob A. Riis and read Daily Life in the Industrial United States, 1870–1900 by Julie Husband and Jim O’Loughlin. They should also go tour a modern manufacturing facility to see the refined industry of today. We should ignite kids’ natural inventiveness by encouraging them to innovate, design in CAD, 3D print a prototype, manufacture a real prototype machined out of metal, and then see their product implemented. This will show them the basics of lathes, mills, programming a machine, and blueprint dimensioning applied to their own ideas.

The sophomore year should also teach the American heritage of manufacturing and innovation. We must teach what a product is, how it has value to an economy, and how product creation triggers innovation.

Our children must be inspired by the great industrialists and inventors and learn their stories. Henry Ford fixed watches and built steam engines as a kid. The Wright brothers were well known for the quality of the printing presses they designed, built, and sold before they built bicycles and became famous for flight. The profits from their print and bike shops funded their airplane endeavors. We must give them heroes. For girls it could be Margaret Knight, the “Lady Edison.” Or Kate Gleason, who remarked in 1928, “I talked of gears when a woman was not supposed to know what a gear was.” Many kids want to make a difference and create positive change and then try to be the next Greta Thunberg or a social media influencer. But real change is not created by people giving their opinions. It is created by tangible action and real-world products. (Henry Petrovski, who studied the history of engineering, once remarked, “[A]s engineers, we were going to be in a position to change the world—not just study it.”) We must teach them the difference between design engineer, mechanical engineer, manufacturing engineer, production engineer, electrical engineer, CNC machinist, and programmer. We should teach them about injection molding, castings, forming, joining, coating, plating, sintering, and bending. And teach them all the different pathways they can branch off onto with a good foundation in manufacturing, like automotive, aerospace, food processing equipment manufacturing, textile product mills, apparel manufacturing, computer and electronic product manufacturing, shipbuilding, biomanufacturing, energy systems, nanotechnology manufacturing, heavy equipment manufacturing, and so many more.

These fifteen- and sixteen-year-old kids must be taught that the independence of running your own business is much more achievable if you have a general knowledge of how products are made. We should excite them with the idea of entrepreneurialism, and show them that, if they have a product or desired skill set, manufacturing knowledge can arm them to better start their own business.

Here is an example of a system that should be mandatory in every high school, from Curt Schleibaum, a technology manufacturing teacher at Seymour High School in Indiana. “We’re trying very hard to build a foundation of the understanding of manufacturing, of what it takes to be a good employee or a good business owner,” he said of the program started at the school. That program, Owl Manufacturing, is a student-run manufacturing business based out of the school. It was launched in 2016 and named after the school’s mascot. Students produce T-shirts, use 3D printing to create other items, and do laser engraving to make name tags, selling all these products to local stores as well as the school. And the program seems to be having the intended effect. “When I got to this class, it kind of opened my eyes,” said one senior at Seymour High. “Manufacturing is not a bad word anymore. It’s good work to go into. It’s not dirty work. You can get a high-paying job.”

Excerpted with permission from Manufacture Local: How to Make America the Manufacturing Superpower of the World by John Gardner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.