Oct. 5 was celebrated as MFG Day in the U.S., with manufacturers across various industries opening their facility doors to give students interested in manufacturing careers the opportunity to learn the what, why, and how things are made through thousands of educational events.
Held annually by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)—the U.S.’ largest industrial trade association—MFG Day has grown by leaps and bounds since its 2012 inception. That first year saw 240 MFG Day events held, with that figure jumping to 834 in 2013; 1,647 in 2014; 2,599 in 2015; 2,807 in 2016; and 2,902 in 2017. The MFG Day website shows that as of Oct. 10, a total of 2,704 events were planned for 2018. And while that number would be its first decline, it’s still remarkable. The overall leveling off in the number of MFG Day events may just be due to saturation, as nearly all economic indicators show U.S. manufacturing output and jobs have continued to increase so far in 2018.
Of the 2,653 MFG Day 2018 events planned in the U.S., Michigan led all states with 307, followed by California with 249 events and Iowa with 123. The rest of the top 10 states include Illinois with 118; Indiana with 100; Florida with 96; Pennsylvania with 94; Louisiana with 83; Wisconsin with 80; and Virginia with 78. All 50 states participated, along with 16 events in Puerto Rico; 33 events in Canada; and nine events in Mexico.
In 2017, MFG Day had 595,341 total participants, of which 267,607 were students. The 2018 individual participant data isn’t yet available.
While Oct. 5 was the official MFG Day for 2018, manufacturers hold events throughout the month of October, which has become known as Manufacturing Month in the U.S. Events will continue to happen over these next few weeks in association with MFG Day. At the events, manufacturers hold plant tours, Q&A sessions, demonstrations, seminars, and job-fairs in front of predominantly high school students.
The benefits of hosting a MFG Day event are at least threefold for manufacturers: It raises awareness of the kinds of jobs available at that company’s facilities for future recruiting efforts, is a branding opportunity for simply showing off what goes on at their facilities, and is a great public relations move. They are also generally inexpensive to do, aside from coordinating the logistics and time needed to host. Many of these events are only a couple hours long.
The electronic test & measurement industry faces many of the same challenges facing general U.S. manufacturers, especially when it comes to employment factors of recruiting, knowledge drain, and succession planning. Hosting an MFG Day event would be a great way to make your company known to an incoming wave of youth interested in engineering, and give you the chance to share the importance and highlights of test & measurement. T&M may not be as flashy as design engineering, but early exposure to it would go a long way toward attracting millennials and Gen-Xers into the industry. Such an event would also be perfect for promoting any internships or apprenticeships you may offer.
Just as some extra engineering data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects 139,300 new engineering jobs during the next 10 years, while the current number of engineering jobs is marked at 1,681,000. BLS said the average salary for an engineer is $91,010, while EE’s 2018 Salary Survey showed an average salary of just over $100,559 among engineer respondents. The BLS said there were 136,300 current electrical and electronics engineering jobs as of the end of 2017, with an estimated 5,100 jobs added in the next 10 years. The mean salary for an electrical/electronics engineer in 2017 was $97,970, according to the BLS.
Below, see a collection of MFG Day Tweets put out by participating manufacturers:
