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The U.S. manufacturing industry recently received $183.8 million in workforce development grants from the U.S. Department of Labor to help create and promote partnerships among educational institutions, companies and trade associations. The grants, together with the Labor Department’s plans to award an additional $100 million in grants to further promote apprenticeships, were applauded by the National Tooling and Machining Association (NTMA) and the Precision Metalforming Association (PMA).

“There will be an estimated two million vacant manufacturing jobs by 2025, and the industry cannot close this gap on its own,” says PMA president David Klotz. “The federal programs announced mean that the government is listening to our message, that for manufacturing to continue to drive the economy, this country must invest in helping manufacturers train the next generation of workers. We encourage congress to provide funding to expand these types of programs.”

“We are proud that in Arizona, NTMA is a recipient of one of the Labor Department’s workforce development grants,” says NTMA interim president Doug DeRose. “NTMA and its chapters have made workforce development a top-priority issue for more than a decade, and these grants will help our efforts to close the skills gap in our industry.”  

The Labor Department also made public a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to establish a process for the department to advance the development of industry-recognized apprenticeship programs (IRAPs) that would enable manufacturing associations and others to apply to the federal government to obtain the ability to certify apprenticeships themselves.