IPC International Community magazine an association member publication
Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1540512
In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to encourage the expansion of apprenticeships, setting a goal of 1 million new active apprentices. The order demonstrates that policymakers now under- stand what manufacturing employers have long felt: If we want to bring more manufacturing back to the United States, we need ways to build talent pipelines. Florida Manufacturers Need Workers. Here's How to Make It Happen I N T H E N E W S By Lea Tavani, Human Resources Director, Mack Technologies Workers are the backbone of our industry, and right now, we need more of them. More than two-thirds of employers in electronics manufacturing reported dif- ficulty in finding and retaining skilled workers in an industry survey by the Global Electronics Association. By 2031, the U.S. manufacturing sector is projected to have 2.1 million unfilled jobs. For employers, the benefits of appren- ticeship are well documented. In the United States, employers report an average return of $1.44 for every dollar invested in apprentice- ship. Apprenticeship helps employers with hard-to-fill roles, as well as increases the pro- ductivity of workers. But even though appren- ticeships are an age-old idea (dating back to Ben Franklin and Paul Revere) with plenty of data to back them up, they remain underused. The good news is that interest in appren- ticeships is growing: The number of active registered apprentices in the U.S. has nearly doubled in the past decade. While appren- ticeship has the deepest roots in the skilled trades, it's also expanding to new industries like firefighting, teaching, and healthcare. Can the approach work in fields like electronics manufacturing as well? At Mack Technologies, we piloted our first apprenticeship in 2024, with four apprentices graduating from the Surface Mount/Circuit Board Technician apprenticeship program in Melbourne, south of Port Canaveral on Flori- da's east coast. After the success of the initial 9 2 C O M M U N I T Y M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 2 5