I have reviewed more than 700 student applications to the National STEM Festival. Not one of them used the word “manufacturing," but many are already designing, prototyping, testing and building in ways modern manufacturing demands.

More than half of those projects focus on health and medicine. Nearly 40% use AI as a core tool—not a talking point, a baseline. Students are modeling energy systems, designing diagnostics, building robotics and creating tools that interact directly with the physical world.

This is real work, aimed at real problems. This is what modern manufacturing looks like.

They just don't know to call it that. And we haven't told them.

The Word Hasn’t Caught up to the Work

Say “manufacturing" to a 17-year-old, and you know exactly what they picture: product assembly lines on factory floors. The field has moved on. The word hasn't. Today's manufacturing means designing, prototyping and scaling solutions that operate in the physical world, and is embedded in healthcare, climate, national infrastructure, supply chain resilience and other areas. It runs on the same AI tools these students are already fluent in. It demands systems thinking and adaptability—exactly what shows up in application after application to the National STEM Festival.

The interest exists. The aptitude exists. What's missing is the connection between what students are already doing and the industries that desperately need them to do it.

This Is Not a Future Problem: The Numbers Are Already Here

The need is not abstract. Manufacturers are projected to need as many as 3.8 million new employees by 2033, roles that will require exactly the hybrid technical skills these students already have.

Today, just 8% of the manufacturing workforce is under 25. Nearly 459,000 positions are currently unfilled. We talk about this as a recruitment failure. I think it is a storytelling failure.

When a student designs a modular vertical farming system powered by solar energy that uses hydroponics and AI-driven sensors to optimize growing conditions, that is manufacturing. When they model more efficient energy distribution using simple parts and semiconductors, all connected to an app, that is manufacturing. When they build a robot to navigate a dangerous environment, that is manufacturing. We need to say so — clearly, consistently, and long before these students self-select out of industries they’re already qualified to enter and choose a different name for the work they love, be it “health tech” or “climate tech” or “robotics,” while skipping on “manufacturing” altogether.

This year, the National STEM Festival theme is "The Builders." That is exactly how this generation understands itself—not by industry label, but by what they make and what it does in the world. They are motivated by impact. More than 40% of Gen Z workers say they actively seek employers with meaningful environmental commitments. These are not students who need convincing to care. They already care. We just keep describing the destination in language they've never learned to recognize.

The Field Belongs to Them

The fix does not require new funding or restructured curriculum. It requires the people who shape how students understand the world—teachers, employers, policymakers—to make one honest, consistent connection: The problems you are already working on live inside manufacturing. That field belongs to you.

The next generation is not absent from this conversation. They are already in it, building what comes next, under a dozen different names. We just haven't introduced them to the one that fits.

For the decisionmakers, the ask is simple—show up where these students already are, call their work by its right name—and the pipeline builds itself.