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Workforce Development

About Workforce Development

MxD can help communities build a manufacturing workforce of the future. With programs in places ranging from high school to the factory floor, MxD focuses on helping companies train and retain skilled workers who are nimble and digitally savvy. It’s a dire problem, as manufacturing is facing both a skills gap — with about 500,000 industry jobs vacant — and a perception gap. Many students and their families lack an accurate understanding of a modern factory environment, and we are working to rectify that.

    Group of students visiting MxD’s factory floor

    What Is Workforce Development?

    Workforce development improves a region’s economy by aligning its people with market needs. In manufacturing, the challenges around workforce often begin in the home, where one study found that just one in every three parents would encourage their child to go into manufacturing. It stretches all the way into corporate leadership as executives struggle to keep up with the latest technologies and practices.

    Click the button below to learn about cybersecurity has evolved within the manufacturing workforce.

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    Black and white image of MxD’s Learn program

    What Does MxD Do?

    MxD Learn is MxD’s workforce development program, and it’s helping to build manufacturing talent starting as early as high school. In partnership with other Manufacturing USA institutes, MxD Learn is testing a three-year digital manufacturing curriculum and developing a separate four-week awareness program for high school students. With ManpowerGroup, MxD also has created job titles and descriptions for 165 manufacturing jobs of the future and has recently released the Hiring Guide, a report that features 247 identified cybersecurity roles. It also is launching a manufacturing apprenticeship program for high school graduates in partnership the City of Chicago.

    Testimonials

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