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Education and Workforce Development
ManTech EWD: Building Tomorrow’s Manufacturing Workforce
The ManTech Education and Workforce Development (EWD) team plays an integral role in creating a bridge between technology innovators and those responsible for training and educating the current and future manufacturing workforce. The ManTech EWD team, through its position within the Department of Defense, has a whole-system view to convene and coordinate stakeholders to better align emerging technology and talent development, linking and leveraging learning methodologies, technological resources, and subject-matter experts to develop collaborative, scalable workforce solutions that enhance the capabilities of the U.S. workforce.
The
Mission of ManTech EWD
is to work through stakeholders to build an educated and skilled advanced manufacturing workforce that is prepared to meet the needs of an advanced technology-enabled manufacturing sector.
Criticality of Mission
In the U.S., manufacturing companies of all sizes and from all industry sectors share a pressing challenge
–
finding enough appropriately educated and skilled workers to fill available jobs. As reported by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute who have been tracking the skills shortage for the past 19 years:
As many as 2.1M manufacturing positions (53 out of every 100 jobs) are expected to go unfilled through 2030 because of a shortage of skilled workers.
Should this skills shortage persist, the U.S. risks losing $2.5T in economic output over the next decade.
Demand for workers with advanced technology knowledge and skills is rapidly increasing due to expanded use of these new technologies. Research suggests that through 2030, workers can expect tasks requiring advanced technological skills to increase by 50 percent in the United States.
Currently, the U.S. is not keeping up with its global competitors in addressing this challenge, ranking only ninth in the world for its workforce readiness to adapt to increased workplace automation.
The Department needs a resilient industrial base and workforce with advanced manufacturing skills to be globally competitive, enable technology modernization, and rapidly field weapons systems for a ready and dominant military force. The problem is a breakdown between education/training structures and a lag in numbers of advanced manufacturing-skilled workers. COVID-19 has exacerbated this problem, erasing approximately 1.4M U.S. manufacturing jobs and undoing more than a decade of manufacturing job gains (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). Without an appropriately skilled and capable workforce, the Nation will be handicapped competitively, and national defense and economic security will be at risk.
Additional statistics are available here:
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
,
The Manufacturing Institute
,
Deloitte
, and
The Economic Policy Institut
e.
Initiatives
ManTech EWD is leading multiple initiatives to build a skilled and capable advanced manufacturing workforce. Key to this work are the Manufacturing Innovation Institutes (MIIs). Each institute, in its role as innovator developing and disseminating new cutting-edge technologies, plays a unique and critical role in connecting and aligning industry, education, and regional stakeholders.
Students engage in
LIFT's
Learning Lab