Gen Zers are steadily abandoning the college-to-corporate pipeline, opting for trade school and blue-collar jobs instead. They’re suiting up as electricians, plumbers, and carpenters for six-figure salaries—but there’s one thriving industry they’re still turning their nose up at.
Manufacturing is one of America’s hottest growing professions, with 3.8 million new jobs expected to open up by 2033, according to research last year fromDeloitte and the Manufacturing Institute.
Yet half of those roles are predicted to go unfilled. Just 14% of Gen Z say they’d consider industrial work as a career, according to a separate study from Soter Analytics.
Smart.
Sure, if a factory job is available, why not pick it up for a bit? But terrible job security, as we’ve seen over the last few decades, so don’t count on it for a career. You can’t offshore a plumber.
Manufacturing is one of America’s hottest growing professions
Dunno what universe Fortune is talking about, but in this one, manufacturing is shedding jobs like almost every other sector in the US.
https://www.challengergray.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Challenger-Report-November-2025.pdf
No, no there’s is the fanciful one where jobs they don’t yet exist should determine how people approach their career since that’s how far ahead businesses plan supply chain.
Who wouldn’t want to make a career decision based on a new experiment to reverse 50 years of off-shoring through genius tarrifs that get reversed because of the ever-changing whims of a toddler and his handlers? When the end game is of course fully automated robotics, why wouldn’t people want to start off in an industry that clearly will replace their career with a blanket the instant they can?
Kill the unions
Wonder why there’s nobody left to work
These retiring boomers are leaving a union position and taking a pension in many cases which is not transferred to the next generation. Management has been squeezing and squeezing.
Without the union pay and with the spike in housing costs, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the third generation in a row that re told that blue collar work is awful is not getting on board with the least fulfilling version of blue collar work.
Not only rock bottom pay, but crazy long hours.
10-12 hour shifts plus overtime. Thats straight bullshit.
I can understand it in hospitals (although nurses and {most} doctors need to be taken better care of then we do now.) Because it takes a while to safely switch care providers, but industrial work and long hours is just raping workers for profit.
This article full of shit. We losing 4 million manufacturing jobs probably.
