The Case for a National Manufacturing Policy, Part 2

Last week, I wrote five blogs and all five times I wrote on manufacturing. That was a lead-up to Labor Day.

The conclusion of my manufacturing spotlight series was on making the case for a national manufacturing policy. There are key areas which I think need attention and focus.

It's time to focus on embracing manufacturing, investing in skills training, removing uncertainty about public infrastructure's future, achieving energy independence, and reducing regulations.

I'm taking the five days this week to explain these.  Here's today's:


Investing in skills training.

A few weeks ago, I published the chart from Joel Kotkin citing the imbalance between persons trained through higher education and the cost of that versus people trained through workforce training programs and the cost of it.

Kotkin said this was out of whack.  He's right.  In a time of tight budgets and a need to focus on investing in the things that return on the investment, its skills training that needs a focus.

A national manufacturing policy must make skills training work for manufacturers as job one.