America is preparing for a manufacturing renaissance. Will there be enough workers?

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• Amna Nawaz:

  Last night, economics correspondent Paul Solman took us inside a community college program that trains the manufacturing workers of tomorrow.

  In part two tonight, we hear from employers about their efforts to recruit new talent and whether a manufacturing renaissance is really under way.

• Robert Lenardi, Meyer Tool:

  We're really suffering right now.

• Paul Solman:

  Suffering from a lack of workers, says Rob Lenardi, who runs operations for Meyer Tool in suburban Cincinnati. And I have been hearing the same complaint for years.

• Lori Joyce, Concrete Pros:

  The work is there.

• Paul Solman:

  Lori Joyce a few years ago have Concrete Pros in Northern Ohio.

• Lori Joyce:

  We just need the workers.

• Paul Solman:

  The despairing employer sound bites have been legion, and so too the optimistic bites from programs I have covered over the years that are trying to address the problem.

  For example, even 10 years ago, South Carolina's BMW plant was doing all it could, according to one of its new recruits.

• Amanda Echols, BMW Manufacturing:

  They pay for your college, first of all, so you will get a degree when you're done. You make good money while going to college. I just did not see anybody turning it down, really.

• Paul Solman:

  And yet most young people do.

• Robert Lenardi:

  There's a vacuum there, and we are always on the lookout for bringing people in. And even when we're starting from scratch. In some cases, people had no idea what they were getting into. And they come along really well.

• Paul Solman:

  So America's manufacturers still can't find enough workers, despite the promise of president-elect Donald Trump.

  Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. President-Elect: This new American industrialism will create millions and millions of jobs, massively raise wages for American workers and make the United States into a manufacturing powerhouse like it used to be many years ago.

• Paul Solman:

  Manufacturing has been touted as the next big thing in jobs by both parties, all of America one big maker space, as in the past, when factory workers made up something like a third of the labor force. That number is now down to less than 10 percent.

  But there are some 19 million working-age men out of the work force entirely, not having even looked for a job in the past 12 months. A manufacturing revival, it's argued, will lure many of them back to work, men without a college degree promised higher paying jobs just waiting to be filled.

• Andrew Holloway, Meyer Tool:

  I was just driving past, going down the road. I saw a big sign saying that they were hiring, basically, and decided to put my name in, and it worked out.

• Paul Solman:

  Indeed, Andrew Holloway, who quit college, got paid while training on the job at Meyer Tool. And it's a sophisticated gig.

• Andrew Holloway:

  We got CMMs here probing down to a ten-thousandth-of-an inch.

• Paul Solman:

  CMMs, coordinate measuring machines, and you don't need to go to college to operate one.

• Nikalani Hall, Meyer Tool:

  I got here is through a referral program.

• Paul Solman:

  Same for Nikalani Hall, a logistics coordinator before a friend referred him to Meyer. Schooling?

• Nikalani Hall:

  I think the best experience you can get is more hands-on, compared to learning in a classroom.

• Paul Solman:

  Moreover, there's a strategic reason to revive manufacturing in America.

• Ryan Augsburger, The Ohio Manufacturers' Organization:

  We're seeing the recognition of vulnerabilities of global supply chains.

• Paul Solman:

  Ryan Augsburger, head of The Ohio Manufacturers' Association.

• Ryan Augsburger:

  And it seems to be driving more, we call it reshoring, but it's investment that was offshored a generation ago, back into the U.S.

• Paul Solman:

  So the jobs will be there, says Joe Resko, supervisor at noisy metal manufacturer Worthington Enterprises. Earplugs are standard issue.

• Joe Resko, Worthington Enterprises:

  I believe we will continue to grow. There's a lot of people out there that want to come in and contribute to good companies. And, in America, they want that to happen, right?

• Paul Solman:

  Maybe, but the company sure has to work hard to recruit them.

• Joe Resko:

  We have created great partnerships with our local high schools. We actually have signing day, if you have seen the college athletes that sign. And then we employ them inside our businesses, inside our factories, and we promise them an opportunity for a job.

• Paul Solman:

  And because kids are into video games:

• Joe Resko:

  We do virtual reality, the virtual glasses. We take local high schools and show them the manufacturing facility.

• Paul Solman:

  But why are Ohio's firms only now making such strenuous efforts? I asked the head of the Manufacturers' Association.

  Because they're more desperate?

• Ryan Augsburger:

  I think that the desperation has brought them together, yes.

• Paul Solman:

  But if they build it, will the kids come? These are seniors on the welding track at Kilgore High School in East Texas oil country. But with all the high-paying oil related jobs, why not more kids in the program?

• Chelsi Rocha, Student:

  They might not know how many opportunities you can get from that line of work.

• Paul Solman:

  Chelsi Rocha.

• Chelsi Rocha:

  And they may not know the benefits of going into manufacturing.

• Morgan Dowell, Student:

  I think you have got to find the right ones that still have that motivation.

• Paul Solman:

  Morgan Dowell.

• Morgan Dowell:

  As a whole, I think a lot of them are less motivated, or they're motivated towards an easier job.

• Paul Solman:

  Zevin Dent agrees.

• Zevin Dent, Student:

  From my generation, I think people — to be honest with you, I think people have less motivation to work because there's so many other avenues of work that they could do online.

• Paul Solman:

  Like they see online, says Kiefer Hunter.

• Kiefer Hunter, Student:

  On social media, I see stuff where people make millions of dollars just off a phone or a computer. And that seems like the easier way to go.

• Paul Solman:

  Teacher Misty Lewis says the mood is shifting some, at least in Kilgore.

• Misty Lewis, Teacher:

  For welding specifically, we have got teachers that were in the industry and now they're teaching. They do a great job of telling our kids, this is where you can go. These are the companies. I think that's why it's growing.

• Paul Solman:

  In most places, however, it doesn't seem to be growing fast enough, especially given all the Baby Boomers aging out of the manufacturing work force.

  But maybe a worker shortage won't be a problem if A.I. and robots rush in where young folks prefer not to tread, at Worthington Enterprises, for instance.

• Joe Resko:

  We can automate, and we continue to look to automate.

• Paul Solman:

  And thus the age-old question, which I put to Stanford's Erik Brynjolfsson.

• Erik Brynjolfsson, Stanford University:

  I have always been frustrated by this.

• Paul Solman:

  The idea that high tech will eventually eliminate manufacturing jobs entirely.

• Erik Brynjolfsson:

  It's probably the most common question I get, is, are robots going to eat all the jobs? And I always say no. I do point out that technology has always been destroying jobs and always creating jobs, but that second part is important, that there's this dynamism in the U.S. economy.

  As some jobs get automated, new jobs get created, and right now there's no shortage of demand for labor, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

• Paul Solman:

  OK, too many old folks hanging it up, not enough young people, or even robots to replace them, a manufacturing renaissance without the workers to sustain it?

  Not so fast, says economist Robert Lawrence. The historical data suggests no such revival, as he documents in his new book, "Behind the Curve."

• Robert Lawrence, Harvard Kennedy School:

  As countries develop economically, the share of manufacturing jobs tends to rise, and then it peaks.

• Paul Solman:

  So the long-term outlook might not favor factory jobs after all, because, historically, they peaked long ago.

• Robert Lawrence:

  After that, there's a downward trend in manufacturing employment shares, and this isn't just true of the United States. It's true of most countries, almost every developed country in the world.

• Paul Solman:

  And, in fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected the number of manufacturing jobs to be added over the next eight years, less than 1 percent.

• Donald Trump:

  We will lead an American manufacturing boom. We're going to have a manufacturing boom.

• Paul Solman:

  But president-elect Trump, like the Democrats before him, is betting otherwise.

  Our friends at Meyer Tool make life-or-death jet engine parts, tooled so precisely, they can't even be off by one-thousandth-of-a-human hair. But they depend on foreign-made machines.

• Robert Lenardi:

  These are Japanese machines making parts for a Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engine.

• Paul Solman:

  Which goes into?

• Robert Lenardi:

  An Airbus A320neo jet.

• Paul Solman:

  Which is made?

• Robert Lenardi:

  In France. It's a global community working on specific machine components.

• Paul Solman:

  So, right now, if I come to you and say, hey, look, let's make a Makino machine here in America, how long before we could pull that off, and do we possibly have enough human power now coming out of schools?

• Robert Lenardi:

  It's going to take a lot of engineering talent to be developed to design equipment like that. It would take five, six years easily.

• Paul Solman:

  Assuming there's a job surge in manufacturing at all.

  For the "PBS News Hour," Paul Solman in Kentucky and Ohio.

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