Made in America: The Economic and Workforce Benefits of Reshoring Manufacturing - Harry Moser, Founder of the Reshoring Initiative

With U.S. manufacturing facing a potential shortfall of 7.5 million skilled workers, how can we bring jobs back and build the workforce to sustain them?

In this episode of The TechEd Podcast, host Matt Kirchner sits down with Harry Moser, founder and president of the Reshoring Initiative, to explore the critical intersection of reshoring manufacturing, workforce development, and technological advancement. With decades of experience in manufacturing and workforce advocacy, Harry shares actionable insights for educators, policymakers, and business leaders aiming to strengthen America’s industrial future.

From addressing workforce shortages to overcoming supply chain risks, Harry explains the importance of apprenticeships, hands-on learning, and reshoring strategies like total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis. He also reveals why countries like Switzerland excel in workforce preparation and what the U.S. must do to compete.

Listen to learn:

• How reshoring addresses a 45% cost gap with China to protect U.S. supply chains and economic security.
• Why FAME apprenticeships produce $98K earners within five years, rivaling or exceeding college degree outcomes.
• How TCO analysis helps manufacturers uncover hidden costs, making U.S. production viable in 50% of cases.
• What the U.S. can learn from Switzerland, where 60% of students enter apprenticeships & fuel their industrial workforce.
• How reshoring has grown U.S. manufacturing jobs 25x since 2010—and the critical steps needed to sustain it.

3 Big Takeaways from this Episode:

1. Reshoring is essential for U.S. economic and national security in an era of global uncertainty.
The U.S. faces a 45% manufacturing cost gap with China, but Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis shows that 50% of cases favor reshoring when hidden costs like tariffs and geopolitical risks are factored in. Harry Moser emphasizes the dangers of supply chain disruptions and reliance on foreign manufacturing for critical goods.

2. Apprenticeships are a high-earning alternative to traditional college degrees, with faster results.
Graduates of programs like FAME earn an average of $98,000 annually within five years, far surpassing many degree holders. They also start earning earlier, graduate debt-free, and enter the workforce with advanced technical skills in high demand.

3. The U.S. must address a projected 7.5 million skilled worker shortfall in manufacturing.
Harry Moser highlights Switzerland’s apprenticeship model, where 60% of students gain hands-on skills through advanced training programs, as an example the U.S. could emulate. Building similar pathways could help meet workforce needs and drive manufacturing growth.

Resources in this Episode:

To learn more about the Reshoring Initiative, visit: reshorenow.org

Try the Total Cost of Ownership Estimator®

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Transcript

Matt Kirchner: 0:08

Matt Well, welcome into the TechEd podcast. My name is Matt Kirk nurse. Our listeners, well know we are the number one podcast in technical education streaming now on more than 45 platforms in 126 countries around the globe, and consistently reaching individuals in the world of manufacturing, manufacturing leaders, people in the world of public policy, governmental leaders, and especially those students and teachers in technical education that every single day of the week are making huge impacts both on the world of work, on the world of education, in on our next generation of manufacturing talent. You know, this is a topic that is important to me. I spent 25 years in manufacturing, 25 years as a manufacturing Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, saw lives fundamentally changed by careers and opportunities in advanced manufacturing. Now here at the TechEd podcast, we spend every single week securing the American Dream for the next generation of STEM and workforce talent. You know, it's interesting the way the world of manufacturing is changing. I remember back to the late 90s and the early zeros, when I was a manufacturing executive and all kinds of work was going offshore to Asia, specifically to China. We were losing work here in the US, to places like Mexico. Manufacturing found its lowest cost of production, or at least its seemingly lowest cost of production. Well, now we are here in the year 2024 and glad to say, thanks in part to some of the supply chain challenges that we saw in terms of COVID, thanks in part to automation and advancing manufacturing technologies, we are seeing manufacturing and we are seeing jobs come back to the United States of America in the world of advanced manufacturing. A huge proponent of this work, a huge catalyst for making sure that American industry and education is ready for all of this work coming back from offshore, is today's guest. His name is Harry Moser, and Harry is the founder and president of the RE shoring initiative. Harry, awesome to have you with us. Thanks for coming on.

Harry Moser: 2:03

Great to be here, Matt.

Matt Kirchner: 2:04

So let's start off with just your incredible experience. You and I were talking in the warm up about the work that you're doing for the manufacturing skills Standards Council. Our dear friends, Leo and Neil Reddy and others, you've been involved with the NTMA, that's the national tooling and machining Association. NIMS, the National Institute for metalworking skills Coalition for career development is another project I'm sure that you're working closely with people like Leo on tell us about all of that work and how it contributes to workforce development and manufacturing. Clearly,

Harry Moser: 2:32

we need many more skilled workers, right? Eventually, millions and millions more. With the NTMA, I was the chair of the apprenticeship Council, we had a contest every year apprentices from all over the country that were working for NTMA members could compete, and the top two or three winners, I would then take over to Switzerland. Wow, because I was the president of charme charmey, GF, machining solution, Swiss machine tools to take three of these young men, typically men, so over to Switzer to see the best apprenticeship programs in the world. Interesting, an incredible hundreds of apprentices, really smart kids, doing just great work, getting incredible training. And that was a motivation for NTA members to have apprentices and for apprentices to sign up, but we also gave away a free, inexpensive machine, or a big discount on a fancy machine to the shop whose apprentice won the contest, so as to motivate them to do it right. So we were writing really, really pitching, and it worked out very well with NIMS, I was on the board for 20 years or something like that. Okay? And they were, they were the original credential in manufacturing and machine, yeah, machining for sure. And did just a great job. And with MSSC, I was on the board and then on their leadership council, and worked closely with Leo and Neil, great, great people like you say. And then the Career Development Center is focused on making it less important about the degrees you get and more important to have the career that you're able to achieve, right, and which I think is widely missed in US education, that the focus should be on preparing people for a wonderful career, rather than the highest degree that you can manage to get them to get.

Matt Kirchner: 4:17

And I couldn't agree with you more, it's about it's about the competencies, what you know and what you can do when you get to whatever comes after that education pathway, more so than what letters you can put behind your name or what what you know piece of paper you can put on your wall. Looking forward to getting into that in a little bit more detail right as we go through our conversation, but would love to take a half a step back and just you know from all these experiences in the decades that you've been doing this kind of work, what are maybe a couple of lessons that you have learned specifically, and how those lessons shape the way that you think about workforce development as we look to the future of opportunity in manufacturing.

Harry Moser: 4:50

When I compare the Swiss skilled workforce system to the US sure the Swiss attract students into. Apprenticeship program from, let's say, the broad middle, the middle of the capability spectrum, maybe, maybe even the upper little bit over into the upper half. Okay, whereas in us, it's hard to get those kids because they're all told, Oh, you're you're pretty good at math, you're pretty you can read. You should obviously go on and get a degree. So. But there it's the norm. 60% of the kids go into these programs. And therefore you're obviously getting, you know, well, up into the into and the ones that aren't competent, they're not allowed, right? Yeah, right. And, and so you get many more students getting recruited, smart, generally smarter students, very motivated students, and they get incredible training. So when I've taken these tours over, I took three or four different tours, and you meet these kids, and they're 20 years old, and they're smarter than the average college graduate that I meet in the United States, right? They know technology. They know they have a really strong skill in some tool making, something like that. They speak English, French and German, right? Yeah, really impressive. People, incredible. And then at the companies where there are apprentices, I met the the vice presidents and the owners and the presidents, and almost to a person they were. They had started at the company as an apprentice. They'd worked their way up, and they knew the product, they knew the process of making it. They knew the employees, they knew the customers. And so when, when the company had decided who's going to be the next, VP sales, VP engineering, obviously, one of the people that's skilled, rather than an MBA, we're parachuting in from somewhere that doesn't know anything about what's going on there, absolutely

Matt Kirchner: 6:38

is, is that one of the reasons you think the paradigm, maybe, in a place like Switzerland, is different around manufacturing careers than it is here in the United States, because so many of these folks and and let's face it, you're a president, you're a CEO of a manufacturing company. You're working at a senior level, or even a, you know, an entry level or mid level and business development and so on. From a, you know, compensation and a prestige standpoint, these aren't slackers, right? I mean, these are some people that are doing some pretty amazing stuff, as well as folks working in manufacturing, working on the manufacturing floor and so on. Is that the reason that the maybe the paradigm is a little different, or what would you attribute that to?

Harry Moser: 7:11

They've had this apprenticeship program going for, what, 500 years or something, right there. And I think we had it originally. I think, you know, Franklin, some of those probably were apprentices, so but, but somehow we lost it, especially, especially after World War Two. Yep, partially, I think, because we we had so many immigrants coming over from Switzerland, Germany, France, that we already had the skills. Oh, interesting. The companies didn't have to train as many. And then times got tough, and business was hard, and companies weren't making money, say, slash the apprenticeship programs. And at the same time, everybody was telling the kids that the only way to get ahead is to get a bachelor's degree, Master, preferably a PhD. And so you had all these forces working against it, whereas in Switzerland, the smart kids, many of the smart kids said, Yeah, of course, I'm going to be an apprentice, right?

Matt Kirchner: 7:59

Yeah, interesting. So it's really, I mean, if you have something for 500 years, that's just the way that you grow up. That's a, you know, just a norm in here in the United States. To your point, hey, I hadn't thought about that with all the immigrants coming over, you know, either pre or post World War Two and bringing those skills with them, in some ways, we probably had this benefit in manufacturing that we didn't even realize that we had in terms of workforce. Was bringing all these true craftsmen and experts in their field into manufacturing. And then, to your point, maybe it was the, you know, 70s and 80s and some of the contraction and people started asking some of the questions about when you whether manufacturing is the right career. And now here we find ourselves in the year 2024, and to your earlier point, two or 3 million, probably advanced manufacturing jobs will be available to our young people over the course of the next 10 years, and to people of all ages as they poured in from other aspects of the economy. So great opportunities in advanced manufacturing, if we can upskill, train and prepare the next generation.

Harry Moser: 8:52

You mentioned a couple million jobs, right? There's a the forecast by Deloitte in the Manufacturing Institute is that there'll be a couple of million shortfall, right? So there'll be jobs that will be created, but, but the excess due to normal growth and retirement, if we keep playing the game as we are now, we're going to be 2 million short, yep. And then my objective is to balance a goods trade deficit increase US manufacturing by 40% by 5 million jobs. That means we now have a

Matt Kirchner: 9:20

7 million jobs, right? Exactly right. So, yeah, that turned half million job shortfall projected by Deloitte, which I think is probably a couple years old now, exactly right. And if we do grow manufacturing, because we're bringing it back, or we're certainly manufacturing domestically, and there's other ways of growing manufacturing, of course, but yeah, if we've got a shortfall of five to 7 million jobs, of course, that you know, we may, we may, we may be able to offset some of that with automation and so on. But, I mean, the point is clear, and that is that we are going to have a huge shortfall in manufacturing employment and and really it's going to, it's already constraining growth in manufacturing, I believe, here in the country, and that problem is only going

Harry Moser: 9:55

to get worse. No question, the number one criterion for companies picking a location. Question for a factory is skilled workforce? Yep, the number one criterion for companies picking a factory for reshoring is skilled workforce. And so if you're a worker, what do you want to have? You want to have the skills that every company is looking for. And those turn out to be the the kind of manufacturing skills that that are that we're talking about,

Matt Kirchner: 10:19

absolutely advanced manufacturing skills like robotics, automation, programmable logic controllers, understanding fluid power, basic AC, DC, motor control, motion control, all these incredible manufacturing technologies that are, you know, that are so ubiquitous in the world of manufacturing. And it's really it's an exciting time to be in the space. It's an exciting time to be seeing all the innovation. Harry, why did all the jobs leave in the first place here, where we saw work, believe in the United States and going to other parts of the world. What was the reason for

Harry Moser: 10:47

that cost? Okay, we did a survey with plant Moran, one of the big auditing companies, sure, and surveyed manufacturers and distributors and said, to the extent that you consume or or sell a product that's imported instead of made here. Why do you do it? Overwhelmingly, they said, price, sure. So they went abroad for price. Now, because they did that so strongly, there are now categories of components that it's almost impossible to find made in the United States. So some now would say, we go available. Go short for availability, because I can't find it here. Well, that's because all the people who made x were not making x, right? Exactly, out of business, right? So finally, it's price, and the price difference is substantial. We have some statistics on the China manufacturing cost, or FOB price, as a percentage of the US, and it averages out around 65% so the US prices is like 60% higher than the China, right? And so companies look at that and say, Well, if I don't go there, or my competitors go there, I'm going to be out of business. I thought it go there, huh? So so it was a price is uncut with the overwhelming

Matt Kirchner: 11:56

driving force. Is that still the driver? Is the differential still that that great at this time. Okay, yeah,

Harry Moser: 12:01

no, the Chinese wages have gone up substantial, right? They've gone up 10 15% a year for many of the last 15 or 20 years. But they've also raised their productivity an average of six or 7% a year, right? And ours has gone up an average of 0.5% per year, half a percent per year, because they're investing two, three times as much in robots and machine tools and automation as we are, right?

Matt Kirchner: 12:28

Yeah, well, you look at, I mean literally, and this is, this is data I borrow from Mike Chico, who's the president and CEO of FANUC America. And I know he got it from another organization. But you know, you look at a year ago, the number of robots deployed, for instance, in China, was more than the number of robots deployed in manufacturing in the rest of the world combined. I mean, so you're, you're seeing exactly that. That's why, by the way, I'm such a huge advocate for young people learning robots and automation skills and getting exposure to these skills while they're in middle school and high school, getting them excited about these kind of careers. Because it's not, I mean, there's, there's a cost implication for sure, and so there's no question, but that we've got cost implications of individuals taking manufacturing offshore. And to your point, you know, 45% less to manufacture a product in China than it is here in the US. And that's good for consumers in some ways, as long as quality and so on stays at the same level. But then we get to a point where we also have to take a look at what are the other unintended consequences of that. We look at, you know, the National Defense implications of not being able to manufacture certain parts and products here in the United States. You look at the challenge in the world of technology, with getting our hands on things like integrated circuits and chips. And obviously, the chips and science Act has been a huge, you know, a huge impact in terms of getting people interested and excited about building infrastructure here for for building chips in the United States. But it's not just about getting inexpensive products. It's also about all these other unintended consequences with not keeping manufacturing here in the US. So let me ask you this, if it is 45% less expensive to manufacture in a place like China, what's your message to manufacturers? Why should they be bringing manufacturing back?

Harry Moser: 14:09

Our first message is, when they do the analysis, they should not look just at the cost of manufacturing or the fob price, the exports price, but to look at the TCO total cost of ownership. Okay? So we have a free online calculator that they can use, and they put in the fob price in each of the two countries, and then they they answer a series of questions that add in the duty and the freight, the carrying cost of inventory, the intellectual property risk and 25 other factors, and we've got a new version coming out soon that will also quantify the geo political risks. Okay, so there's a probability 1% 5% 10% per year, that there'll be a war over Taiwan and China and the. On this, many people say it'll happen by 2027, because that's the three years. Xi said that's what he wants it done, right? Yeah, and so, so we say that what a company should do is say, What am I getting, getting from China and Taiwan? If there was a war and I was cut off for an extended period, six months, a year or two years, how much product would I not be able to ship? How much revenue, how much margin would I lose? What's the probability of that happening? So you get an expected value of margin loss, right? Therefore, how much more should I be willing to pay for domestic product as an insurance policy to make sure I'm not put out of business by something that could happen over there, right? Sure.

Matt Kirchner: 15:41

So you're not necessarily telling them, Hey, you have to bring everything back from offshore, but you're saying, look, there's this, there's this tremendous risk that goes far beyond just what it costs you to manufacture a product on a direct cost basis, direct cost of labor and materials and so on that we need to be taking into account in understanding as we make our supply decisions. And you know, I think a tool like the one that you just mentioned is really helpful. I've sat in the seat of having to figure out, where do I manufacture, where do I produce? You know, what is my direct cost? What are my competitors doing? What's my cost going to do as a result of of their decisions? More important, what's my ability to compete on price going to do with regard to those decisions? So all really, really important factors for them to take into account. So am I correct in understanding that you're basically looking to them and saying, Look, you need to have a portion of your manufacturing that stays domestic. Are you telling them they have to bring everything back? It

Harry Moser: 16:29

would be unrealistic to bring everything if all of them brought everything back. We would need today, 10 million more work,

Matt Kirchner: 16:36

right? Totally. Yeah, exactly. We couldn't do it here

Harry Moser: 16:38

anyway. So we have these statistics, for example, relative to China. So imagine a line chart the distribution. Here's China price as a percentage of us. Here's the distribution, and the peak is around 65% like I said, but there's substantial portions of it that are only where China prices 90% or 85% of the US. So obvious things to bring back first. And one thing to remember, when companies look only at the price, 8% of the cases the US wins. When they look at total cost, 32% of the cases us wins. And if there's a if it's from China and there's a section 301, Trump 25% tariff, right? Then over 50% of the cases the US West, interesting, just doing the math correctly, right? They can see huge opportunities. And that's not even

Matt Kirchner: 17:30

looking at the geopolitical risk. That's just looking at the straight dollars. Yeah, that

Harry Moser: 17:34

was excluding geo political. It was excluding ESG, environmental, social and governance. Just by doing the math correctly, they can see big opportunities. And then, in addition, if they get their people really well trained to increase productivity, and they invest in new technology, like we have here at IMTS, for sure, bam, the percentages go up. Even more awesome.

Matt Kirchner: 17:53

That's so, so exciting. So how is it going? I mean, you know, I think I talk a lot of times now about kind of the renewed interest in American manufacturing. And if there's a silver lining that came out of COVID for manufacturers back in the days where we could get anything we wanted at a price we wanted, anytime we wanted, then it was really easy to take American manufacturing for granted. And all of a sudden we didn't have that. And people that didn't spend their time in manufacturing every day, all of a sudden woke up to the idea that, hey, wait a minute, this manufacturing thing, maybe there's something to this. How are we doing on restoring now, several years in,

Harry Moser: 18:25

let me answer the general sort of question first, yeah, back 20 years ago, very popular MBA, kind of strategy was cut back to your core competence, which turned out to be research, finance and marketing, right? We thought

Matt Kirchner: 18:41

America could be the engineers of the world and let people manufacture things elsewhere,

Harry Moser: 18:45

and specifically, don't even own the factory over in China, right? Let somebody else own it. So your assets are cut by two thirds, and your margin goes up because you bought the stuff cheap, and so your return on assets went up dramatically. Yep. Okay, so that would that was the theory. And now people are understanding that doesn't make any sense, especially given the geopolitics. So, for example, many people have said very clearly that companies are going from saving pennies on the components that they buy to making sure they have the components so they can make 1000s of dollars selling their end product, right? Yeah, keeping their customers and that like, I have a quote from somebody that says we used to worry about saving money and everything. Now we worry about how much revenue you we will lose if we don't have that screw Sure. Yeah,

Matt Kirchner: 19:35

exactly, right. Well, and that's a really good way of looking at it. And the other part of it is that, you know, in those ensuing 20 years, you know, places like China and India figured out that, you know, they can produce engineering talent too. I mean, they can. That's not something that the US has cornered the market on. And in fact, in a lot of cases, there's way more engineers being graduated in some of those countries than we have here in the US. So we certainly can't sit here anymore, not that we ever could from a position of saying, hey, we'll just be. The the intellectual geniuses into our design and engineering and planning and in production and supply chain, and let somebody in another country manufacture the part. Eventually they're going to figure out that model, and in many cases, that's

Harry Moser: 20:11

what they've done. In fact, I've spoken at several of the leading universities to their engineering departments, and especially in the ambassadors and PhD programs, the majority of the students are not Americans. Amazing. Yeah, they're they're immigrants. Not doing immigrants. They're here for to get a degree, right? And many of them go home. And so we trained all these people to be the best they could be for their country, right? Instead of training our kids to be the best they could be for our country, absolutely.

Matt Kirchner: 20:36

You know, I was at the commencement of a master's degree program in data science in my home state of Wisconsin earlier this year. And, you know, I mean, it showed the students, and then their their home countries, and it was the vast majority of them were not from the United States, believe it or not. And so that's just another example of how others are figuring it out, and why it's so important for us, with the importance of manufacturing here in the United States to have a full force, kind of full full court press on on how I'm bringing manufacturing back, and then on up skilling the next generation of the workforce. So we've talked about, yes, there's a need and a goal and an expectation that we're going to bring manufacturing back to the United States, and we're seeing that already. We've talked about the the number of jobs, whether it's two and a half million or seven and a half million, or some number in between that we're short in terms of having people prepared for these kind of careers. So what does this all mean for workforce development? In your mind, where do we need to

Harry Moser: 21:26

go? First? First, let me quantify the what's happened. When I started in 2010 in that year, we identified 11,000 jobs reshored by US companies or foreign direct investment by foreign headphone companies like General Motors and Toyota.

Matt Kirchner: 21:42

So 11,000 jobs in that that had come back to the US, or that we created, announced in that year to come back. Got it okay? 2010

Harry Moser: 21:49

yes in 2023 in in the year, yep. 287,000 Wow. So we're up from 11,000 to 280s per year, 25 times, something like that. The last couple of years was surged by COVID companies experiencing that, and then by the chips Act and the IRA and the Buy American right? So the government is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into subsidized coverage through that, and our fear is that when that money runs out, and then the companies still have a manufacturing cost that's 30, 40% higher than the other places, right? That some of those factories are going to close and and peak companies will go back

Matt Kirchner: 22:30

to the old ones. And, yeah, and there's the hundreds of millions of dollars that was spent to no benefit, yeah, yeah. So, so

Harry Moser: 22:34

we think that eventually the government has to level the playing field, which for us, is a combination of skilled workforce, right? Absolutely need it can't, can't produce more. We want more people, right? And second, to get the cost down, either adjust the currency, take some of the premium value out of the dollar, like 20% 25% you know, over a five year period, kind of thing, yeah. Or tariffs, very popular topic. Both sides are pushing for tariffs. And the difficulty with tariffs is that, like right now, steel is tariffed, right? And therefore the price of steel in the US is about 20% higher than the price of steel in almost any other country. So if I'm a machine shop and I'm competing with the Chinese or Indian machine shop. They're buying steel, the raw material, for 20% less than I am and and sometimes I hear people say they're importing the product landed here in the US for less than my cost of the steel to make it right exactly

Matt Kirchner: 23:35

well. So which has a huge impact on the on the trade deficit as well. And you start thinking about, you know, in certain cases, I'm not arguing for against tariffs, but we can tariff things all we want that only affects domestic consumption and doesn't make us it makes us less competitive globally from an export standpoint. So you and I agree that we can certainly use those strategies to, you know, to move behavior, but you know, at some point it's the fundamentals of the economy and the pricing model that's going to make the most sense, and without a skilled workforce for the future, and without competitive manufacturing, there's only so long that we can kind of prop that model up.

Harry Moser: 24:06

So we'd say, in terms of tariffs, we'd say, if you're going to tariff, you have to tariff everything. You can't just do steel, you can't just do China, you've got to tariff everything so that the work can't get flooded around through Vietnam or Mexico, right? What have you Yeah.

Matt Kirchner: 24:20

Yeah, exactly, yeah. People are supply chain and manufacturing. People aren't dumb. They're gonna figure out a way to get to that product where they need it at the lowest possible overall cost. There's no question about that. So tell me a little bit about now. So your work at the reassuring initiative, I mean, you've mentioned the problem and define what we need to do. How do you specifically plug in and address the issues? We document

Harry Moser: 24:40

the trend so people can see that trend in jobs. So see it's real, we then promote it. So I'll do 50 or 60 events like this a year or something like that. We write maybe three articles a month. We get interviewed three four times a month. Had did dinner with a Wall Street Journal reporter last. Right? Super. And then we we provide the tools to make it happen. So this TCO estimator I described, which is free online, on our website, free again, free anybody to use, right? Okay, and then we have something called the import substitution program. So imagine a shop that's really good at making housing, you know, something housing, we can tell them who the biggest importers are of housings and what tonnage that company is importing, whom they're buying it from, roughly what they're paying for it. And then we can train our client to use the TCO estimator to convince the importer to buy from them instead of continuing to import. Got it right. So we have a series of tools like that, to help help companies see the advantage of reshoring, help the job shop, convince the OEMs to see the advantage, and help the technology suppliers, like the exhibitors here, convince both of them to go ahead and do it.

Matt Kirchner: 25:55

So let's talk about this. Whether I'm a company, I'm a consumer, I'm an educator, somebody may be involved in in public policy, government, workforce advocacy. You know, what are those two or three things, Harry, that we need to be doing more of in terms of all the work that you're doing, where you see the opportunities in manufacturing?

Harry Moser: 26:12

To me, the probably the biggest problem, companies are short sighted. They think, when I need a welder, I'll find a welder, as opposed to all trainer world to a company's short side, no question about that, but the government is the most short sighted. I one thing that absolutely drives me crazy on the Department of Labor, Department of Education websites, there's a chart. It's in a dozen places, and the headline is, bachelor's degree makes a million dollars more lifetime income than a than a high school degree, huh? Okay? And if bar chart like this, no high school, high school, community college, bachelor's, Master income going up with every degree level, okay? And, and what I've been trying to get them to do, with limited success, is put in the average income of someone who's passed an apprenticeship, okay? Or has five or more Nim certificates, sure? Yeah, absolutely. And because it turns out, like, for example, fame, at fame, the average income five years after graduated from the fame apprenticeship program is$98,000 which is the equivalent of a PhD, right? Yeah, exactly. Okay. And so as I've been trying beating on the Department of Labor and Department of Education to show that there's another way to win, as the degree isn't the only way to get there. And in fact, in fact, one analysis I did for NTMA 20 years ago, I compared the lifetime income of a tool and die apprentice with that of an English major and tool and die apprentice always made more money after they finished the apprenticeship and they started work sooner, and they didn't have any any educational expenses, right? I always made more money. I paid half of it in taxes, invested the other half at 7% per year, and at the age of 49 the tool maker had a million dollars more net worth than the English major. Yeah, but how many guidance counselors are telling kids anything like that? Nobody exactly right? So we need to get away from the college is the only way to get ahead. To the skills are essential for getting ahead Exactly.

Matt Kirchner: 28:19

Yeah, to your earlier point, it's not necessarily the degree hang on the wall. It's one of those skills. It's the fact that, you know, a lot of students that begin maybe a four year pathway end up on another pathway. I mean, I, you know, the school that my kids went to was a great school, and it but I just told me crazy every year the principal would get up and say, well, 98.6% of our students went on to, you know, to four year education. And I, you know, I finally just said, Look, I know that at least one of those kids that was in that number two years ago is now living three doors down from my house in the basement of his parents house. Because, yes, he went away for a year and a half to four year university, and it didn't work out. And now he's, you know, now he's back living at home. And yet, we have so many great examples of students that are choosing whether it's, you know, whether it's going to a community college, going to a technical college, to your point, securing some credentials that maybe they credentials that maybe they wouldn't have had, or or better yet, we'll talk about it, pursuing an apprenticeship program where the earning potential is just tremendous. I was in central Iowa talking to a gentleman that was a senior leader on the workforce side, on the on the labor side, at a huge manufacturing plan. He was telling me about his son, who was 24 years old, had chosen a pathway in welding, was making tremendous amounts of money, had just bought a brand new pickup truck, paid cash for it, had his own house, and had paid off half of his mortgage at the age of 24 and then you compare that to somebody, if you're on a PhD program pathway, you just got another three years of education before you're earning your first dollar, and whatever that that degree is, I mean, it's just, it's tremendous. So

Harry Moser: 29:44

to sort of nuance out a little bit, yeah, it turns out that of the people who go to university planning on a bachelor's degree, 30 or 40% of them never graduate, like you were talking about, okay? And of those who do graduate five or 10 years after graduation. And 30 or 40% of those are still underemployed in jobs like Starbucks and so on. Another interesting story, I met someone from Milwaukee Area Technical College. I know I met our Vice President about 15 years ago, and he was bragging about the fact that that community college is the second largest graduate school in Wisconsin, because only Madison has more people who already have a bachelor's degree. So they've got 1000s of people who come back with a bachelor's degree, right and get a skill so they get a job and pay off their college life.

Matt Kirchner: 30:36

I know isn't that crazy? Yeah, by total coincidence. I don't know if you know that, but the town where I live our Technical College is Milwaukee Area Technical College. So, so I know that. I know that institution well, but that's exactly right, and it's, I mean, people lose sight of the fact that, you know, as we think about our Technical and Community Colleges, and I sit on a number of advisory boards, foundation boards and so on for community colleges and technical colleges across the Midwest, you know, an average age of a student, they're 2728 years old, and a lot of them are exactly what you're explaining, which is people that got a degree, somebody told them to follow their passion. Well, my fat passion is philosophy. Well, okay, that's awesome, but, you know, there's some jobs in philosophy, but not a lot of them where you can make tremendous amounts of money, or significant amounts of money being a philosopher. I don't, you know, I've never hired a philosopher before. I don't know if you but

Harry Moser: 31:21

it's I got into it once with one of the top economists, yeah. And he said that the a high percentage of the corporate CEOs or Philosophy graduates, interesting, yeah, because their mindset, the logic, the something, has enabled them to do that. So he was adamant that, that if you want to be a CEO, you're better off maybe, yeah, than an MBA, yeah, and

Matt Kirchner: 31:43

then he might be right about that. My counter question to that would be, okay, what percentage of Philosophy graduates are CEOs and companies that most Exactly.

Harry Moser: 31:51

One other thing I'd like to get in, yeah. One reason, another reason people haven't gone into manufacturing is that they thought all the jobs were going away. So why would I want to do an apprenticeship, get trained on something, and then all the manufacturing goes down the hall to China or somewhere, no jobs for them. And if you look at the statistics until until maybe 15 years ago, we were in this continuous decline in manufacturing employment, okay, but if you look at the last 14 years, essentially since we started, there's been a continuous gradual uptrend in manufacturing employment, and unprecedented for 40 or 50 years in the United States. So instead of coming down, it's it's not booming, but coming down a long time before you can go up substantially, you have to stop going down, exactly. Stop going down. Yep. And in fact, I took the first the time period from like 94 like 200 to 200 to 2010 and then regressed that line. And if we continued on that trend today, we would have 6 million fewer manufacturing jobs. So the so that sort of the belief system, the impression that most people have of the past is this continuing decline, and the reality is it hasn't continued. And why is that? Because the offshoring that was happening so aggressively when China opened up right has slowed down dramatically, and the reshoring and foreign direct investment have picked up dramatically. So instead of going down like this, we've done this, and then my job is to get us, yeah, make

Matt Kirchner: 33:23

it an inverted bell curve, right? And it's interesting when I talk to people in about manufacturing careers a lot of times, and maybe their parent or a grandparent or a neighbor or whatever, I had a bad experience with a layoff. And certainly knowing people that have been through that, there's nothing fun about that. And frankly, having having been in the position of having to decide, in some cases, what your size of your workforce needed to be. There's nothing fun about that either. But we've got this paradigm in some people's brains that manufacturing jobs are risky because you're just, you know, there's a chance you're going to get laid off. And I'm like, if you there is, I mean, there's a chance working anywhere, that your job could change or go away or what have you? Have you seen the layoffs in the tech space and and yet, 80% of our young people want careers in kind of the traditional tech companies. My My argument is the tech companies, they should be looking for jobs in our manufacturing companies, because, to your point earlier, the technology that's emerging in manufacturing, these are technology jobs. There's there's no question about it. My guess on the TechEd podcast is Harry Moser. He is the president and founder of the reshoring initiative. I'm told by our research team, we talked a little bit about Switzerland already. To ask you about the Swiss story. Gary, so, so would you share with our audience the Swiss story? So

Harry Moser: 34:31

on one of these Swiss tours I took, when I took the apprentices over, we went to one of the biggest Swiss machine tool makers. Okay? And he was demonstrating his machine, and it was just like a vice president. He said, You know, the interesting thing, when we develop the programming for some intricate part, or Germany or Switzerland or Austria, we do it in one process, on one machine. Okay, when we do it for the US, US, we break it down into two processes. Is because, on average, the US programmer, CNC machinists, etc, isn't well enough trained to take advantage of the more sophisticated, more multi access programming interesting, which therefore is hurting our productivity, hurting our cost structure, hurting deliveries. So I want to get I want to recruit, and I want to really well trained so we'll kick the ass out of those other countries, right? Yeah,

Matt Kirchner: 35:23

absolutely no. I mean, and it's interesting, because you think about the world of manufacturing that I lived in, I talk about this quite a bit. Though, we used to have, you would have a, you know, maybe one individual running one machining center, and you'd have a person that was maybe responsible for programming. You'd have another person that was responsible for quality. You might have another person that was responsible for setup and operation and so on, and in some cases, those could be four or five different jobs. And what we're seeing now, for a lot of reasons, is the convergence of those different skill sets. I think part of that is just our ability to automate contract and production machining in a way that you know, we don't have to have a person standing at every single individual machine. But to your point, that really requires us to train a workforce that understands how they can, you know, how we can upskill individuals around multiple disciplines, as opposed to just one, to make a more versatile manufacturing employee? Is that what you're seeing as well? Yes, I agree with that. So I think that's a message for our educators and our manufacturers that we have to have individuals who are multi skilled, multi disciplinary working in manufacturing, which means that we've got to step up our approach to education in a way that students and individuals and workforce training programs are learning these skills as they walk through that process. And then it's incumbent on our manufacturers to really tell that story and get out in the field and share the great opportunities that we have. Harry in manufacturing, tell our audience a little bit about what you're hearing on the recruiting side. And if I'm a manufacturer, how should I be thinking about recruiting this next generation of

Harry Moser: 36:53

talent? One thing is housekeeping. Okay. Now you go into an office. Office are generally pretty nice, air conditioned, clean, well lit, quiet, you can play music, maybe. And some factories are wonderful. I've been in factories nicer than 90% of the offices, sure, yeah. But I've also still today, been in factories that are not so good. It's been generally agreed that one of the deterrents to recruitment is the three Ds, dark, dirty and dangerous, right? Okay, so if you want to recruit successfully, you have to overcome that. I'm gradually working on an article about turning the three Ds into the five S's. Go ahead. So for, for dark, shiny, you know, for, for for dirty, bot loss, you know, what have you. And in terms of safety, dangerous. It turns out that the number of injuries per 1000 work hours in manufacturing is lower than for employment as a whole in the United States. So so where possible I have data to make the case, and where I can't get data, like shiny and so on, I've solicited pictures from different trade associations to have examples of the best shops to show how nice it can be. And then the idea is to get that article done and get it out to people like you and others who can use it to overcome those myths of the past and convince companies to make sure that they don't that they they were, they're more the 5s Ling, the 3d

Matt Kirchner: 38:21

absolutely no. I love that. I mean thinking about the Toyota Production System and the advent of lean manufacturing and the importance of 5s sorting, sustaining, shining and so on. Really, really, I could see totally where you could say, Look, we need to convert from from 3d to 5s and really get into an organization where our manufacturing facilities are cleaned every day. They're where they're standardized across manufacturing processes, which aids and training that we've we've gone through, and we've taken those things that don't belong there, that aren't adding value or aren't necessary for production, and remove them from the manufacturing floor. And so that, you know, I agree 100% if you're talking about to a student about the amazing opportunities that are available to them in the world of advanced manufacturing, and then you're going bringing them into a manufacturing plant, and they see, you know, poor lighting, or the the ceiling isn't painted, or things are laying all over the place, or, or, you know, employees aren't dressing in a way that that looks like they're there to get the job done, and and are treating their job as a profession. I could see where there's all kinds of challenges that that come along with that. First,

Harry Moser: 39:23

there's a problem of recruiting that kid. And if the kid turns out to be easy to recruit into that environment, you probably

Matt Kirchner: 39:30

don't want to right exactly, yeah, that's place they want to work. They probably, they may not be the right person for the job. That's a that's an interesting observation, for sure. So let's talk now about that that kid, whether it's a kid who is thinking about the future of manufacturing, excited about a career in advanced manufacturing, considering the different avenues, you know, coming out of high school and going direct to workforce, maybe going to a community college, maybe, to your earlier point, to getting a bachelor's degree and something that doesn't have a job at the end of it, and then coming back into manufacturing, and then we've got this whole idea of apprenticeship. Apprentice and becoming apprentices, and I know that's a huge part of your advocacy. So let's touch on that a little bit in your view. And for the listeners who may not be completely familiar with the apprenticeship model, what is it? What does it feel like? And what would you recommend students do to approach it?

Harry Moser: 40:14

Traditionally, an apprenticeship model was four years, the traditional European system, four years, like in Germany or Switzerland, started 16, you know, they transitioned from high school to work, maybe three days at the company, and two days they're at a technical college of some kind, getting getting the theoretical, maybe some still languages and history, physics and some math, and then gradually more work and less of that. Typically, they have a master who's responsible for making sure they're learning, someone who's the role model for them, and that's where God now there's a tendency towards reducing the four years to fewer years than making it skill based rather than time based.

Matt Kirchner: 40:58

Okay. Are you an advocate for that?

Harry Moser: 41:00

I think you have to be okay. I think because you take some, some kid who doesn't have any money, and maybe, maybe you start them at $15 an hour or something as an apprentice, and they want to make 20, $25 sure you want to get them out there as soon as you can. So I think I have to be in favor of it, although I wouldn't want it to be one year. You can't do it or one year, yeah. So that's the typical apprenticeship system. That's my gold standard, but, but I believe there's also a place for three months, very focused, very intense training on one discipline, milling or turning, or EDM ing or quality, or some, something that can get you from a $12 an hour grunt to a $18 or $20 $22 an hour medium skill, you know, journeyman in that and that one narrow thing, and then you can get the additional training to pick up the other capabilities that you were describing before. So because some kids, kids say the kids 18 or 20. He's got a kid wife, right? And the wife isn't working for some reason. He's got to support him, you know, you got to get him out there making a good wage as soon as you get or you're not going to be able to keep them absolutely.

Matt Kirchner: 42:12

Give me an example, some success stories of either apprenticeship programs you think are working well, or maybe students that you've been exposed to or familiar with that have been really successful through an apprenticeship program now,

Harry Moser: 42:22

well, the I mentioned this fame, yeah, which is down in Kentucky, I

Matt Kirchner: 42:27

think it started, and it's taken off in other places around the country now too, and

Harry Moser: 42:31

tied into a couple of the auto manufacturers down there, exactly, and had just great success with, like, I say, huge, huge incomes. Every time I read it, I have to double check it to make sure it's true? Yeah,

Matt Kirchner: 42:42

what's a huge income for our listeners? This was, like, four

Harry Moser: 42:45

or five years after graduation, making an average of$98,000 a year. Tremendous, you know, without a degree, but with, with having passed the impact and working hard, right? Of course, wonderful, wonderful. So that's very successful. The in Chicago, there's the GA CC, German American Chamber of Commerce. Yep. No, that was a very value, I think, valuable, successful apprenticeship program. So I got their newsletter yesterday, I think, and it said that they have, currently have 200 apprentices in their program, and my old company had used them to develop an apprentice program. So I think that. I think that's very good. Yeah. So

Matt Kirchner: 43:22

what would you tell a student who's considering an apprenticeship? What? What's the message that they need to hear? You

Harry Moser: 43:26

got, you got to pick a field, right? I mean, do you want to be a plumber? Do you want to be an electrician? Do you want to work in manufacturing? And probably, if you're 16, it's hard to decide you want to be a tool maker, but machining, right? Which could be tool making, could be precision, machining, could be whatever I think machining would be a, you know, I think is an excellent place to go. Yeah, absolutely.

Matt Kirchner: 43:47

That also speaks, by the way, to the importance of middle school and high school programs that expose students to these type of technologies, right? So that if you are in a STEM or TechEd program in high school, and you don't know, do I want to be a tool maker? Do I want to be a plumber, an electrician, a maintenance tech and manufacturing, a machinist you don't might not necessarily know which of those you want to pursue, and now you're getting exposure to that at your high school and getting a better understanding of, oh, this is really something I would love to do, or maybe this is something I'm not as interested in, in terms of being a student, Harry, I'm going to take you all the way back to your days as a student. Or final question here on the TechEd podcast. It's a question we'd love to ask every single guest here on our podcast. And so I want you to go back in time. And I want you to think about that 15 year old Harry Moser. If you could go back in time and give that young person one piece of advice, Harry, what would it be? I'd

Harry Moser: 44:36

say more hands on experience. So I was a an excellent student. I went to MIT, all the equations on the paper.

Matt Kirchner: 44:46

When did you study at MIT mechanical engineering? And

Harry Moser: 44:50

I was very good, one of the top students and and yet I'm not especially good at hands on actual making things and so on. So. Yeah. So I think somehow, if I could have gotten a year or two of the practical and right before I did the theoretical, yep, I think I think I'd be better today at what I do today.

Matt Kirchner: 45:11

That's really, really good advice for for the 15 year old Harry Moser, and for any student, I think, who's considering what their career path might be, for any educator who's trying to figure out how to get students excited about the next generation of Advanced Manufacturing Engineering STEM careers that hands on aspect a lifelong skill, without question, a great way to get exposed to technologies and a great way to get young people excited about careers in advanced manufacturing. I want to thank Harry Moser, the founder and president of the reshoring initiative, for all of the incredible work that he is doing in terms of not just getting the next generation of the workforce prepared, but in terms of raising awareness of the scope of the problem, up to seven and a half million jobs that we may need to fill here in the next 510, 15 years here in the United States, as we both see the attrition of people retiring from manufacturing and see growth that we expect to see, hope to see and Want to see in manufacturing. It's been a fascinating conversation, Harry. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Matt, and thanks to our audience for being with us this week. What a great conversation we had with Harry Moser, the founder and president of the restoring initiative. I learned a ton about the great work that they are doing. If you're interested in what you heard, check out the show notes. We have the best show notes in the business. You can find those at TechEd podcast. Slash Moser, that is TechEd podcast slash m, O, S, E, R, when you are done on the website, head on over to social media. I don't care if you're on Instagram, if you are on tick tock, if you are on Facebook, it doesn't matter if you're on LinkedIn. Reach out. Connect with us. We would love to hear from you. We'd also love to see you on the next episode of The TechEd podcast. Thank you so much for being with us this week, and we will see you next time you.