Industry Profile:Advanced Manufacturing

These aren’t your father’s factories. Which is why career education programs offered through the Inland Empire/Desert Regional Consortium of the California Community Colleges system are leading the way in providing the increasingly complex workforce skills that the region’s thriving advanced manufacturing industry needs to continue fueling the local economy.

Best of all, community college courses are offered at flexible times and at a fraction of the cost of private vocational schools. The pay’s pretty good, too, with welders earning up to $72,000 or more each year and first-line supervisors of production and operating workers earning up to $90,00 or more annually.

“Manufacturing is a misunderstood field,” said Alan Braggins, who, as deputy sector navigator for advanced manufacturing in the region, facilitates the alignment of community college career programs with industry needs. “It’s really not a blue-collar job anymore. It isn’t a dirty occupation, and it is very high tech.”

Options are plentiful. According to a 2015 study by Deloitte LLC and the Manufacturing Institute, nearly 3.5 million manufacturing jobs are likely to be needed over the next decade and a growing skills gap is expected to result in 2 million of those jobs going unfilled. What’s more, the Greater Los Angeles area leads the nation in the number of manufacturing jobs. And women constitute one of manufacturing’s largest pools of untapped talent; women totaled about 47 percent of the U.S. labor force in 2016, but just 29 percent of the manufacturing workforce.

More than 4,300 advanced manufacturing businesses operate in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, according to the Inland Empire Center of Excellence, and projections call for healthy growth in a number of industries ranging from plastics product manufacturing to forging and stamping. Employment in the aerospace product and parts manufacturing field is projected to rise 21 percent in the next five years, adding nearly 550 jobs by 2020, with average earnings of more than $83,000 annually. The beverage manufacturing industry is expected to grow by 20 percent, or more than 700 jobs, with average earnings of more than $57,000 annually.

Every community college career and technical education program works closely with business and industry in addressing workforce needs. That kind of cooperation led to the InTECH Learning Center, a public-private partnership between Inland Empire community colleges and California Steel Industries that is designed to increase the number of well-trained workers needed in the advanced manufacturing market. Chaffey College is the lead institution and additional community college partners include Barstow, College of the Desert, Crafton Hills, Mt. San Jacinto, MiraCosta, Norco, Riverside City, San Bernardino Valley and Victor Valley.

The InTECH Center, launched in March of 2016, was one of three regional public-private partnerships for workforce development honored for their accomplishments at the 2017 California Economic Summit in San Diego. The Center was hailed for involving community colleges, the Manufacturers Council, and workforce agencies in both San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. The InTECH Center’s long-term economic impact in the Inland Empire is estimated at $168 million.

Statewide, the manufacturing sector generates more than $340 billion each year.