U.S. philanthropy organizations boost manufacturing in areas with high job vacancies

Mary Lamar had been searching for a job that was a good fit.

She worked for a time as a nursing assistant but found it boring. A stint as a shipyard welder ended because she could no longer bear the winter cold. Then Lamar had what she described as a “rift” in her life. That rift led her to plead guilty to robbery in 2019 and to serve time in prison.

Now Lamar, who lives in Cleveland, operates a stamping press, churning out thousands of specialty metal washers each day at Talan Products, a local manufacturer.

“I’ve always been mechanically inclined,” she said. “My mom told me I should have been an engineer.”

Lamar got her job through a program developed by business and community leaders — with help from philanthropy — to match people of color, women, and formerly incarcerated people with manufacturing jobs.

Manufacturers in Cleveland and other cities, including Buffalo, Chicago, and Milwaukee, are dealing with a retiring workforce that’s left thousands of jobs unfilled. Nationally, the industry’s job gap is projected to hit 2 million by 2030, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. The Cleveland region has an estimated 10,000 manufacturing job openings.

By diversifying their job ranks, Cleveland-area manufacturers also hope to improve communities left behind as plants closed or moved to the suburbs. And now with $5 million in federal stimulus money, they expect to help create thousands of new manufacturing jobs over the next few years.

Philanthropy is investing millions of dollars in the Manufacturing Advocacy & Growth Network, a Cleveland nonprofit consulting group that’s leading the hiring push. The nonprofit offers adult training and high-school internships. The Cleveland Foundation has given $2.5 million as a capital building grant to the nonprofit and to help it set up the internships.

Manufacturing remains an economic pillar in Northeast Ohio, despite a half century of plant closings and layoffs. The industry still employs more than 270,000 workers in a 21-county region, but it struggles to find enough workers. Most job openings are entry-level, but others are in engineering, computing, and data analysis.

A national emphasis on college over vocational education has squeezed the pipeline of talent to the industry, which many still perceive as a dark and dirty business, even with the rise of automation and technology. Meanwhile, some communities in large manufacturing cities have little access or exposure to the industry even as they experience higher rates of unemployment and underemployment.

“It’s hard to imagine a life that you have no visibility of or no access to,” Karp said. “There’s a lot of untapped potential that doesn’t even know a career in manufacturing exists. It’s an issue for them, but it’s also an issue for manufacturing as well that they’re not getting the best talent that they could.”

Lamar learned about the Access to Manufacturing Careers training program while she was living in a halfway house after her release from prison. The program, launched three years ago, pays trainees $14 an hour as they learn the fundamentals. Lamar is among 113 of the program graduates who have gotten manufacturing jobs, according to the nonprofit.