The May 2009 survey -- "People and Profitability: A Time for Change," conducted by Deloitte, Oracle and the Manufacturing Institute -- found that of 779 responding companies, 51% reported moderate to serious shortages of skilled production workers today, while 36% reported similar shortages of engineers and scientists.

As the United States slowly emerges from the depths of a recession, Mark Tomlinson, executive director and general manager of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), sees the struggle to find highly skilled workers as perhaps the most pressing issue facing manufacturers.

"The [SME] believes that in the next three to five years this will be the single biggest topic we'll be discussing," Tomlinson tells IndustryWeek. "Once we 'recover,' the biggest challenge won't be the fact that we have an unemployed workforce. It'll be the fact that we can't fill the job needs that are available."

Tomlinson -- who has said that the wealth-creating "twin powers of innovation and manufacturing" are the keys to returning "the U.S. economy to its former glory" -- points to aerospace/defense and life sciences/medical devices as two of the brightest hopes for U.S. manufacturing in the future. However, according to the Deloitte survey, a whopping 63% of companies in each of those sectors reported moderate to serious job shortages.

"Manufacturers are looking for employees who are the opposite of the stereotypical factory worker. " -- Mark Tomlinson, Society of Manufacturing Engineers

The crux of the issue: The recession has spawned legions of unemployed people who "need to be retrained and redeveloped so that they can become a higher-skilled workforce to support the needs of those innovative and creative companies" that will drive the economic recovery, Tomlinson explains.

"Manufacturers are looking for employees who are the opposite of the stereotypical factory worker doing repetitive, assembly-line work," Tomlinson says. "They are in need of 21st century workers with specialized technical training such as machinists, operators and technicians."

Tomlinson asserts that manufacturers need to evaluate the skills of their current workers, look ahead to products and technology that are on the horizon, and help workers develop the necessary skills to "transition from one sector to another as the economy continues to shift from one industrial sector to another."

"[Companies] need to think about agility versus longevity," Tomlinson says.

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