As baby boomer engineers retire from manufacturing, younger generations aren’t rushing in to fill their shoes. Rapidly changing technology has created greater demand for new skills among shrinking pools of talent, just as reshoring efforts promise to make domestic manufacturing even more robust.
This is why the field’s well-documented skills gap will only widen.

As I lied once before on these pages, I tend to avoid getting political in these columns with the exception of the occasional cheap generic shot. But since this is the first column of the new year, it’s that time again when the past year is reviewed and the number crunching begins. 

It isn’t exactly news—manufacturing production lines are heading back to the States en masse, but there aren’t enough trained techs ready to staff them. Baby Boomers—our proverbial Old Guard—are retiring, leaving unfilled jobs for the unskilled—and some say uninterested—masses.