Manufacturing USA recently released its 2018 annual report highlighting the progress its 14 associated institutes have made in growing the Manufacturing USA network, increasing manufacturing technology development and technology transfer, and promoting workforce development.

Despite facing enormous challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, manufacturers and Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Centers continued to deliver a “consistent and significant return on investment to the nation,” in FY 2020, according to a new analysis from the W.E. Upjohn Institute. MEP Centers deliver technical assistance to primarily small- and medium-sized manufacturing establishments to help them improve their productivity and competitiveness.

Manufacturers in the U.S. have been facing workforce shortages despite nearly six years of recent job gains in the sector. Those gains and more have been wiped out by the Covid-19 pandemic, compounding the labor shortage problem for a sector that has often struggled to keep pace with the changing demands of technology. However, this exacerbated labor shortage shows that robots are not taking all the jobs, only increasing the level of tech skills workers need to do their jobs.