The people who fill those jobs, and so many more in the emerging economy, are technicians — people who can leverage technical know-how to make physical adjustments to complete a process. Looking at plant positions that way, you’re facing plenty of competition.

As Jassal told Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing in May, “Plastics isn't just competing among the plastic sector. They're competing with the maritime sector, and, in Ohio, with the semiconductor sector. They're competing in Ohio with the food sector, with the energy sector. There's other sectors that are now competitive, which have never been before, and that's this sector collapse: sector boundaries that no longer define work, which increases the competition for those workers.”

In a joint report, the Manufacturing Institute and professional services firm Deloitte warned that manufacturers might be able to hire only half of the 3.8 million new employees they’ll need between 2024, when the report was released, and 2033.

Employers commonly distill that problem by uttering some iteration of an oft-heard phrase: “No wants to work in manufacturing anymore.” But Jassal said thinking about the dilemma as a labor shortage is no longer helpful. She sees it another way: Manufacturers — as well as many other jobs throughout the economy — have changed in a way that employers and training providers haven’t evolved to accommodate.

Systems are the key in multiple fields

According to an Unmudl press release, the greatest needs are for people who can install, operate, and maintain systems.

It states: “From data centers to advanced manufacturing and energy systems, demand for this capacity is accelerating, and employers are struggling to find enough qualified workers. At the same time, millions of individuals seek stable, well-paying careers but lack clear pathways into these roles. The technician workforce sits at the center of this gap — millions of skilled workers who keep these systems running and represent one of the most direct paths to economic mobility and security. Addressing this disconnect requires a new, coordinated economic framework that aligns demand, training and access at scale.”

Bringing those needs into alignment is the goal for Jassal and Unmudl.

“The problem that is being solved keeps going back to the ‘not-enough’ people and the supply, the friction between training and hiring, and the typical responses of solving for these are, ‘Oh, let me just raise wages. I'll recruit harder. I'll bring in more recruiters. Let's fix the immigration policy. Oh, we need higher retention rates. Let's put in more apprenticeships everywhere, and let's partner with a ton of schools,’ ” said Jassal, who served as a postsecondary success program officer for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and earned a Ph.D. in higher education economics.

“What I think is truly missing is this alignment between the demand, and what is that training capacity, what is the placement strategy and what is that regional coordination in that community?”

Promoting the 'Technician Economy'

When she spoke to PMM, Jassal was gearing up for a busy summer, with a calendar booked around engaging job seekers and employers in discussions about the changing economy. That included the launch of a Technician Economy website, with an accompanying YouTube channel to debut around the beginning of July.

A one-stop-shop of college courses, credentials and services that brings together employers and job seekers, Unmudl represents Jassal’s response to community colleges that told her, “We are becoming irrelevant in America, and we don't know how to stabilize our function and our role in the community.”

Like employers, community colleges have been approaching the problem the wrong way, Jassal said.

While she said so much focus remains on preparing people for white-collar work, the future isn’t office jobs.

Drawing on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Technician Economy website identifies some of the fastest-growing jobs — including positions in wind and solar energy, semiconductor processing, biomedical equipment, industrial automation and robotics, and HVAC technicians — that exemplify this structural change.

What do such jobs have common?

They pay well — $63,650 a year, on average — and typically don’t require a four-year degree.

It’s the “convergence of a skill set that requires physical knowledge, digital knowledge of automation and AI, human judgment and coordination, connectivity and interfaces,” said Jassal, who began her own career as a fiber-optics engineer.

Automation still demands human workers

With automation, the need for certain types of workers is declining, but for every engineer on a plant floor, Jassal said manufacturers still need 14 technicians with a lower degree of training.

“You can automate, automate, automate, but who's going to upgrade the automation when the problem [the automation is programmed to address] changes? And then folks think, ‘Well, sure, then we’ll bring in AI.’ And you can, [but] how is AI developed?" Jassal said.

In a factory setting, Paul Lavoie, VP in innovation and applied technology for the University of New Haven, which trains engineers, said all that automation actually translates to new labor needs.

”It's a mix of automation, it's a mix of robotics. It's a mix of of improved efficiency through better data analysis,” he said in an interview with PMM focused on labor issues and the development of the workforce of the future.

Automation means operators can tend more and more machines. But they can’t be replaced.

“In the plastics industry, machines may be highly automated, but if there aren't people there to fix the problems ... you can go from having seven operators to one, but if you don't have the one operator, that plant isn't working,” he said.

Though she acknowledged the challenges for small companies attempting to shoulder the burden of training new workers, Jassal said companies — especially large manufacturers — must do much more to provide paths to employment and promotion.

That means not looking for certain educational backgrounds, but focusing instead on the specific skills your plant requires.

“If you don't focus as a community on the deployment constraint, that gap, that innovation-gap, what you end up with are the symptoms of the labor shortage and workforce bottlenecks. And when you're in that situation, yes, the knee-jerk reaction is, ‘Well, there's only five people, if I can pay them all $25 more, I'll solve it at least for a year. I will keep my lines running. I'll keep my business running, and I'll worry about it after that year. ...’ ” Jassal said.

For individual companies, that’s not sustainable, so Jassal said the solution must be structural.

“Your competitive advantage should come from your product innovation and your relationships, your excellence, your proprietary processes and speed, not from whether your region can produce enough technicians,” Jassal said. “... That's infrastructure. You have to focus on changing the conversation to infrastructure. That's one part of it. The second is, we are helping the companies build the skills-to-jobs paths, helping them understand what it is within their company: How do you lay out the skills? How do you get from skills to jobs? Does it really require a three-year education? Can it be done in three weeks?”

Contact:

Unmudl, 737-271-0099, https://unmudl.com/