Skilled Labor Series: Manufacturing Careers in Climate Tech

Jul 6

*This episode is part of our Skilled Labor Series hosted by MCJ partner, Yin Lu. This series is focused on amplifying the voices of folks from the skilled labor workforce, including electricians, farmers, ranchers, HVAC installers, and others who are on the front lines of rewiring our infrastructure.

Mark Martin is the regional director for advanced manufacturing for the Bay Area Community Colleges. He works with community college manufacturing programs to help build upon and develop innovative approaches to train students in meeting the needs of the local manufacturing industries. A veteran of the industrial manufacturing sector, Mark also sits on the boards of the Association of Manufacturers Bay Area and the Corporation for Manufacturing Excellence.

We've talked about labor force needs in solar, HVAC, electrical work on the show in the past, but today we touch upon another critical sector of the skilled trades: manufacturing jobs. This means machining, welding, technical maintenance jobs, programmable logic control jobs, etc. We talk about why these jobs are so critical to climate tech solution scaling and how the State of California, through a role like Mark's, is helping match the talent supply to the growing demands for these skill sets.

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*You can also reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded on May 3, 2023 (released on Jul 6, 2023)

In this episode, we cover:

[02:11]: Mark's background in engineering and manufacturing
[03:27)]: An overview of Mark's current role and the California Community College system
[05:02] Overview of career technical education paths (CTEs)
[08:01]: Why Mark's role exists
[10:19]: The process of creating a new program at a community college
[15:48]: The knowledge gap and building awareness of skilled trades career pathways
[18:44]: The importance of exposing more young people to skilled trades
[21:22]: Mark’s vision for a career exploration class for young students
[23:35]: The intersection of climate and manufacturing jobs
[28:45]: Anticipated needs in climate tech manufacturing, the role of automation, and generational gaps in manufacturing labor
[31:27]: International case studies of "earn and learn" apprenticeships
[34:38]: Current tailwinds and opportunities driving innovation in manufacturing trades

Yin Lu (00:00):
Hey everyone, Yin here. My guest today is Mark Martin. Mark is a veteran of the industrial manufacturing sector. He graduated with a bachelor's from the University of Oklahoma, got his MBA from MIT, and a PhD in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. Mark sit on the boards of the Association of Manufacturers Bay Area and the Corporation for Manufacturing Excellence. Currently he's the regional director for advanced manufacturing workforce development for the Bay Area Community Colleges. He works with these community college manufacturing programs to help build upon and develop innovative approaches to train students in meeting the needs of the local manufacturing industries.
(00:40):
We've talked about labor force needs in solar, HVAC, electrical work on the show in the past, but today we touch upon another critical sector of the skilled trades, manufacturing jobs. This means machining, welding, technical maintenance jobs, programmable logic control jobs, and we talk about why these drops are so critical to climate tech solution scaling and how the State of California, through a role like Mark's, is helping match the talent supply to the growing demands for these skillsets. We get into a lot here, but before we get started-
Cody Simms (01:12):
I'm Cody Simms.
Yin Lu (01:13):
I'm Yin Lu.
Jason Jacobs (01:14):
And I'm Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey.
Yin Lu (01:20):
This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms (01:26):
In this podcast we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help.
Yin Lu (01:39):
With that, Mark, welcome to the show.
Mark Martin (01:41):
Thank you. Appreciate it, Yin.
Yin Lu (01:43):
So, Mark, we were connected through Sam Steyer, who I have had the fortune of co-hosting a few episodes of this series with, so thank you, Sam, for connecting us today. I'm really excited to get to know you and to talk about workforce development in the manufacturing sector. It's an area I certainly want to learn more about. But before we dive into what you spend your time on these days, I'd love to take a step back and just to get to know you and how you came to this phase of your career, focusing what you're focusing on. And so perhaps we can just get started on how did you develop your interest in manufacturing?
Mark Martin (02:15):
Yeah. Wow, my interest in manufacturing involved... I mean when I was growing up I tooled around some at home. I grew up in Oklahoma, built my bike, and would play around with my bike. I did a little bit on my car, but I wasn't a heavy duty mechanic kid. But I always liked design innovation and inventions, and I like to keep up on the new technology. So as I was making my decision about what I wanted to do in school and in college I chose engineering, and as I got involved in that and graduated with my mechanical engineering degree I stepped into the role in the manufacturing world and learned how difficult it is to make things, and so that kind of progressed from there.
(02:55):
And then as I became a design engineer part of that was how do you manufacture it, so it just evolved that as I was designing things and getting more involved in the manufacturing I recognized the innovation that is required in manufacturing and the troubleshooting and the challenges there. So that kind of evolved into my focus on manufacturing.
(03:15):
And then over the years I've always been involved in education and I kind of merged the two in this most recent role, where I'm working in the manufacturing field, but really focused on getting more people educated in this area.
Yin Lu (03:27):
Let's jump into the role. So explain to me what your role entails.
Mark Martin (03:31):
Yeah. There's 116 community colleges in the Bay Area. It's the largest public educational organization in the country and one of the largest in the world as far as that. There's over almost two million people in California community colleges. So what I do is I focus on the Bay Area. In the Bay Area there are 28 community colleges in the Bay Area from up to Santa Rosa, down to Monterey, out to Fairfield, which has the Solano Community College and such. So there's 28 community colleges, and my role is to focus on manufacturing workforce.
(04:05):
That means I am there to help connect industry with the community colleges, but also with K-12. I'm sure The Tipping Point and many of your listeners know The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, which is the idea that there's kind of different ways of connecting and working with people. One of them is a connector, and so I act as a connector between different groups, the industry, K-12, and community colleges, and also kind of as what they call a maven, somebody who is there to help them with their questions or concerns or issues around manufacturing and how do we get more people into the manufacturing workforce.
Yin Lu (04:41):
Got you. So 116 community colleges throughout California, the Bay Area?
Mark Martin (04:47):
Correct. 28 in the Bay Area. Yes.
Yin Lu (04:48):
So out of that two million pool, what percentage of students are in the Bay Area community colleges?
Mark Martin (04:54):
It's close to that 25% percent.
Yin Lu (04:56):
25%? Okay.
Mark Martin (04:58):
25% of that, yeah, in the Bay Area.
Yin Lu (04:59):
Got it. So 500,000 students?
Mark Martin (05:00):
400,000 to 500,000 in the Bay Area.
Yin Lu (05:02):
And with the available paths you can go in a typical community college, what do those paths look like? I'm trying to understand kind of the funnel and what percentage of students go into these manufacturing specific disciplines.
Mark Martin (05:14):
Right. Well, the community colleges offer every sort of degree from kind of your liberal arts transfer to your skilled trades. So there's hundreds of different degree pathways you could take. There's a number of different what they call CTE, or career technical education paths, which the skilled trades fit under that. Also kind of health occupations, and photography, and culinary, and a range of different kind of career pathways that only require kind of two years or a year or two certificate degrees fit into that CTE pathway. So as part of that there's quite a few manufacturing careers. You had a question about percentages. There's hundreds of thousands of jobs available in the skilled trades in the Bay Area. The percentage of students, I don't know that off the top of my head.
Yin Lu (06:00):
Got you. Your role and the goal and maybe success looks like getting more people into the manufacturing programs?
Mark Martin (06:06):
Exactly.
Yin Lu (06:07):
And can you give us a sense of just more tactically what does that mean? What are the actual skills in these manufacturing based programs that people are learning and building?
Mark Martin (06:17):
Right. So the types of jobs that we're talking about are industrial maintenance, hydraulics, pneumatics, PLCs, which is kind of the industrial computers, electronics, to machining, which is cutting metal, welding, joining metal, quality control, electronic technicians. So those sorts of skill sets are what is needed in these types of skilled trades manufacturing jobs.
Yin Lu (06:39):
Got you. So knowing that you focus specifically on the manufacturing programs, if we take a step back and look at the CTE career technical education programs as a whole, what other streams of programs are there that maybe your colleagues focus on, just so we can have that broad understanding?
Mark Martin (06:54):
Yeah. When I came into working in the community college system a few years ago my background was in design and engineering and manufacturing. And when I was growing up it was vocational education, which typically was kind of focused on the skilled trades, carpentry, construction, machining, mechanics, auto mechanic, diesel mechanic, things like that. Really the more encompassing term is career technical education, which is, as you mentioned, CTE, which really kind of involves, again, anything that has that maybe one to two year training needed, which, again, can be culinary, cosmetology, things like that, but also photography, nursing. There's some nursing degrees that only require two years.
(07:34):
On the health side there's some ICT types of jobs, that are cybersecurity, that might require only two years. And then you get into more of the trades or the traditional vocational education, is what I always thought of when I was growing up, which gets into the building and construction trades. And then the other skilled trades are, again, machining, auto, things like that.
Yin Lu (07:54):
Got you. Okay. Super helpful ground, super helpful foundation setting, knowledge foundation setting for us. I had this question and I'm going to ask it. Why does your job exist, Mark, and has this role within the community colleges always existed, or has it become a need in more recent years because we're seeing a dearth of talent going into these areas?
Mark Martin (08:15):
Yeah, that's a good question. My specific role has not existed in this form, as this regional director in the area. About 12 years ago they created these regional director type roles.
Yin Lu (08:29):
And by they, is that the State of California?
Mark Martin (08:32):
Yeah, the State of California. The State allocated money for these roles and said we're going to do it in different sectors, so manufacturing, health, ICT, automotive, advanced transportation, things like that. So I just think they recognize that there could be somebody at the regional level that could help pull people together, could look at things that weren't being filled, or issues that might be out there that we could address that were more difficult if you had just the people at the... I don't want to say siloed, but if you're at a college or at an organization you're focused on your organization and maybe don't have as much time to kind of look at these overriding larger issues that affects across all the colleges, so-
Yin Lu (09:13):
Let's dive into what those issues are.
Mark Martin (09:16):
It could be anything from there might not be a program existing in an area of the region that is needed, so welding... Welding is an important skill that is needed throughout for manufacturers is well as the building and construction trades. So where are welding programs? So we have a number of welding programs throughout the Bay Area colleges, but there's really not one in the San Jose area. There's one in Hayward. The next one you get going south is all the way down at Hartnell or Cabrillo, which is in the South Bay/Monterey Peninsula area.
(09:50):
So one of the things I'm looking at is can we develop and put in a welding program at one of the colleges somewhere in the San Jose area? Now that's something that if you're at that college, you're at a college in that area, you don't have a welding program, you might not necessarily think, hey, we need to put in a welding program. I'm trying to look at what the needs are across our manufacturers throughout the Bay Area and see where there might be gaps that exist and what we can do then.
Yin Lu (10:19):
Got you. That's helpful. How do you get the feedback loop going with industry to be able to say, oh gosh, we need to put a welding program in Community College X?
Mark Martin (10:28):
Part of it stems from looking at what's called LMI, or Labor Market Information data, that you can pull. There's various resources, but that's one of the things we use quite a bit in the community colleges, is what are the needs? What are the labor markets that are out there? What are the demands going to be? So the Bureau of Labor Standards, they publish information and there's various private organizations that pull together a variety of information about job postings and then what is that demand currently? What do we project it's going to be in the future? And based on that we can say what is the current supply that we have of programs and how many people can we graduate through these programs, and we see where we might have some gaps.
Yin Lu (11:11):
And then how do you go about developing a new welding program at a community college?
Mark Martin (11:16):
My role is to... I don't work at a particular college, is to kind of bring this up to at particular colleges and say who might be interested? What can we do? This is why I think we might need this. Is there a way to develop this new pathway? So one of the ones that I have done in the past was in quality control. Quality control is the basic, you know, make something, how do you ensure that it is meets the standards? And there's process for that around quality measurement and there's certain skill sets that are needed. And we didn't have a program in the Bay Area that specifically focused on that.
(11:51):
So we looked and we talked to industry, we brought them in as an advisory board, and we walked through the steps of what the job requires, what skill sets are needed, and then worked on developing the classes for that. And as part of that, we brought in the community colleges at the same time and said who's interested? Who already has something similar to this, like the machining programs that teaches a lot of the skill sets already, and what else do we need to add to that to make it a quality control certificate? That's one of the things we've done in the past.
Yin Lu (12:21):
How long does that process take of doing that research, getting the feedback from industry, looking at the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and then going and getting people on the same page about what the need is, to here we have a new program that students can enroll in?
Mark Martin (12:40):
The needs collection, kind of using the design thinking process of going out and talking to the customers, which in this case are both the industry representatives who need these skilled trades employees as well as the students themselves who might be going through it. But collecting that, getting the meetings together, getting everybody to kind of come together, put out their ideas, fleshing through that, might take probably six, seven months of getting that process down and then coming up with a this is what we want the certificate to look like. And then it might be anywhere from six months, to a year, to a year and a half to get the college to run through the approval process and then be able to get... By the time you can find somebody to teach it and then schedule it for a particular semester it can be one to two years after that, just depending.
Yin Lu (13:28):
Got you. So faster than I was imagining. I was imagining this being a five to seven year process of getting through a lot of tape.
Mark Martin (13:37):
Yeah. No, there can be tape. It depends on how closely it's aligned with an existing program. So as I said, quality control is kind of very closely aligned with machining in the sense of a lot of the things that you're measuring and the tools that you're using to measure are already being used in machining, and it's not creating from whole cloth a new type of pathway. But it can take a while, and there's a good reason for that. Sometimes people... I haven't really heard it myself, but some people said there's criticism of the community colleges, they can't move fast enough.
(14:09):
The fact is is we are a little bit of a moderation that we want to try to lay the skillsets incorporated into our classes, which I think we do, but to create a whole new program requires a lot of money to set that up and make sure it's sustainable. So we want to make sure that it's something that's going to be long lived, it's not going to be something that only a few companies need and aren't going to need it after two or three years. So there's kind of a process to make sure that that is a well needed program.
Yin Lu (14:36):
On the financial side in propping up a net new program, whether it's adjacent to an existing program or truly just from the ground up, it doesn't exist, but there's a need for it to exist, what does that funding piece look like and how much does the State actually help with those programmatic development financial needs?
Mark Martin (14:55):
The community colleges are funded through various forms, but basically State funding, so they encourage that. They encourage us to look and see what new programs... We have new programs being approved all the time in the Bay Area, and, yeah, the State pays for that. So you just have to go out and spend that effort to collect the data, work with companies, and submit a new program.
Yin Lu (15:18):
Cool. I think we did a quintuple click into this one gap area, which is in your role figuring out where there are programmatic gaps in the community college pathways vis-a-vis the local industry and the needs of manufacturing. What other gaps are there that you have to address in this role?
Mark Martin (15:36):
You mean programmatic, or just in general?
Yin Lu (15:39):
In general. So like one of the things that you do is programs and what needs to exist, and making sure that those conversations pick up and result in development. What other areas do you spend time focusing on?
Mark Martin (15:52):
There's a lot of gap in just knowledge about what's being offered and what's out there. Sometimes, and you may have experienced this since you talk with a lot of different people, the internet is great. It does not solve all information problems amazingly. I mean it's very easy to go find stuff, but it's still that human part of the interaction and connection that is useful in making things happen. So I still occasionally run into companies saying I didn't realize that college had a machining program. All you got to do is go in and look and maybe search a little bit specifically for machining program in this particular area, so they might not be aware of it, or I didn't realize that you had these programs at these colleges or these resources at the college to help us out.
(16:39):
So I think part of the gap is acting, and again, I mentioned before, that connector position of helping people realize what is out there, making them aware of it, and then showing them how it can help them, if they're at a company how it can help them find the people they need, if they're at K-12 help teachers help guide their students to recognizing that these are good career pathways. So there's just all that sorts of kind of connecting people with the information that they need and with other people as well.
Yin Lu (17:13):
So programmatic development being one, and then just general awareness building across industry and student-based and community colleges?
Mark Martin (17:20):
Yes. Well, and then the gap between where my role looks across the system and can maybe find those gaps, be it programmatic, be it lack of communication that are out there across the region that others aren't maybe seen because their role is more focused on their college or high school.
Yin Lu (17:44):
Hey everyone, I'm Yen, a partner at MCJ Collective here to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast. We started in 2019 and have grown to thousands of members globally. Each week we're inspired by people who join with different backgrounds and points of view. What we all share is a deep curiosity to learn and a bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change.
(18:10):
Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community. A number of founding teams have met, several nonprofits have been established, and a bunch of hiring has been done. Many early stage investments have been made as well as ongoing events and programming, like monthly women in climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops and more. Whether you've been in the climate space for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more head over to mcjcollective.com and click on the members tab at the top. Thanks, and enjoy the rest of the show.
(18:44):
So let's focus on that high school piece. I've been talking to a bunch of people on the topic of workforce development and I asked the question if you can wave a magic wand and make anything happen, how can we get more young talent into the trades and into the skilled labor workforce? And the consistent answer I get is we just need to make people aware of the fact that these are viable career paths and to remove the stigma associated with some of these types of roles, and that starts with the middle school, as early as middle school education and the high school education.
(19:19):
50-60 years ago you had classes like shop and vocational programs in high school, and I feel like in a couple of decades they've waned in popularity. So what's your take on how we can approach the younger people entering to the workforce in addressing the skill trades as a viable career path?
Mark Martin (19:37):
Yeah, I think it's exposure to it. I mean, I grew up in the '70s and there were shop programs in my school. I actually didn't take any, but I was aware of them and I knew people who did. I looked at the people that my parents knew and there was an electrician, there was somebody who ran a gas station. They were more people who worked with their hands manually and did stuff, so I was aware that that was a career pathway that you could take.
(20:06):
Now there are fewer of those programs, the shop programs in schools, so people aren't aware of them and they don't see it necessarily as a pathway that is viable, that is something of interest to them, so they're not exposed to it. And so because of that they have a hard time to conceive of what that might look like.
(20:26):
What do you watch on TV? You watch lawyer programs, you watch doctor programs, maybe you kind of get an engineering program if you watch Star Trek and Scotty and being able to fix things, but you don't get a lot of skilled trades programs going on out there. There's some other reality things that kind of cover it to some degree, so that's helpful, but it's just like you don't know about it. So if you don't know about it how are you going to recognize that this might be something you would like?
(20:50):
So I think that's the thing. How do you get people exposed to it? Putting more shop programs back in the schools would be nice, but it's difficult. It's expensive. Over the last 40 years people have really pushed everybody is going to go to four year school, a university. I think there's a little drawback from that, recognizing the cost, and not everybody finds good jobs. But how do we let people know that manufacturing and the skilled trades are viable career pathways with living wage jobs?
Yin Lu (21:22):
Especially with living wage jobs. If you had a magic wand, what would happen to help that along?
Mark Martin (21:27):
I think that every school would have a career exploration class that made sure that they recognize that the hands-on skilled trades, or engineering even, which is hands-on really as well, exists. Let them see what that is and also talk to them about what those career pathways are. And then from there it could be more opportunities for kids to do these activities, either in classes or outside of classes at summer programs, just kind of get exposed to it and let them know that this can be something... If they really like it this could be a pathway for them, because that's the key thing, helping people find what they like. I don't know about you, but I know lawyers and I know... Probably more lawyers than anybody, but engineers who have gone through that pathway and then decided that this is maybe not what they really wanted to do.
(22:21):
And that pathway of going through law school or engineering served them well in a number of ways, but it wasn't their final passion. So how can we help people find that passion so that if they know they love to work with their hands they choose that because they will be more successful at it.
(22:38):
One of the teachers at one of the colleges here was a German literature major. He was a liberal arts major and went to UC-Berkeley, and ended up taking a machining class and really liked it, and he went back to school and eventually got a career in machining. He liked it so much that he started teaching and is now the lead instructor at the college, the full-time faculty at the college. And so he found that passion in his life not super late, but a little later than he might have, so now he's really enjoying what he does.
Yin Lu (23:12):
That's great. I recently interviewed a journalist at least 10, maybe 15 years writing for various publications, and who has recently transitioned to becoming an electrician for the same reasons, this is what I love to do, is what I look forward to spending time on. So I think that's a good reminder for our folks wherever they are in their career path, be it in high school or in their 50s or 60s.
(23:35):
Okay, I want to change lanes and talk about the intersection of jobs manufacturing and climate. So what do you see are the overlaps between the manufacturing trades and the jobs that people are getting trained for and this topic of climate change and climate tech that I'm sure is bubbling up more now than before?
Mark Martin (23:57):
Right. Well, the Bay Area is, it's been a center of innovation for decades. And what I'm finding is that I've seen it around here as well with climate companies, climate focused companies, is the small companies are cropping up and showing up, focusing on the climate issues. It's pretty interesting. Part of that is when you're developing things for climate change obviously there's software and process methods to help reduce carbon output and things like that, but most of it is technology. It's new hardware technology, ways of generating electricity or reducing it, or different approaches to mining materials that are used in those technologies. How can we create that hardware in such a way to help impact climate change? And that requires technicians.
(24:49):
It's interesting, a few years ago, I was up in Seattle and I was at the Aviation Museum up there and I was walking through and they had pictures of Robert Goddard, who developed the first liquid fuel rocket back in the 20s. He's a PhD and they had these pictures of him, and it was Robert Goddard with machinists, and then Robert Goddard with his shop machinists as he was standing around their liquid fuel rocket. It just indicated to me how important those skilled trades are to making this equipment.
(25:22):
I, as an engineer, learned that very early on, is that the skill sets that they bring to it can kind of make a very important difference about whether or not you can get that product made, that design made properly and out to market on time. So if you don't have good skilled trades people behind you you may not meet the market needs. And so we're seeing a lot of these companies come to us and saying we need skilled trades folks, electronic technicians, machinists or otherwise, to help us develop our products. So that's kind the overlap. You're developing this product, you need the skilled tradespeople.
Yin Lu (25:56):
And I think climate is a moving atoms problem to solve. At the end of the day you need physical infrastructure, machines, devices that is going to help us sequester carbon for engineering solutions to help us get off our dependency on fossil fuels. And so there's just a lot of different types of physical things that need to be designed, cut, built, maintained, so what you're focusing on is helping with the labor supply of people that can do all of those things, because without physical infrastructure changes climate is not going to get solved.
Mark Martin (26:33):
One of the things that people... Are you an engineer?
Yin Lu (26:37):
I'm not, but thank you for even thinking that I-
Mark Martin (26:38):
No, no. Because as an engineer, and like you said I've got a lot of degrees in engineering, but the thing is that amazes me is the skilled tradespeople who have gone through their focus on their specialties was the amount of knowledge they have. I have all these degrees, but I still go into a machine shop and I'll watch what they do and the knowledge that they have, which is critical to creating these products. And so as an engineer who is... We have all these engineers working, developing these new climate technologies, which is great, we obviously need that, but they need the skilled tradespeople as well.
(27:13):
One of the stories that I find very kind of funny to recount is that my wife actually went to MIT as an engineer, so MIT, one of the preeminent engineering universities in the country, if not the world. And she had a friend who went there. He graduated and went to work for a large company, so he was developing something, this MIT engineer, he was developing a product. He needed a little fixture for the product to be made, and so he drew up something and sent it to his machine shop at the company and said, "Hey, we need this," and the guy said, "That's going to be kind of tough. It's going to be expensive." He goes, "No, no, no, this is what I need."
(27:44):
So what he needed, he needed something about 250 millimeters by 250 millimeters, and it was machined and stuff, so that's about 10 inches by 10 inches, so fairly large size. Except on his hand sketch he had put 250 mills. Now mill is a thousandth of an inch. So instead of a 10 by 10 inch thing that they were building, which is... You know, that's pretty... He was telling them to build a quarter inch by a quarter inch thing that was shrunk down to that size, which is really difficult to make. It's easier to make something big.
(28:16):
So he cut it back and it's this little... If you've ever seen Spinal Tap, where they send it out and they make the wrong dimensions... So he's this story of, look, me, this engineer, not knowledgeable, didn't listen to the skilled trades folks, the machinist who said, "You sure this is the right thing," and this was his little mistake. But then overall the knowledge they bring and can help with on creating things is vital, aAnd so that's why they're very important.
Yin Lu (28:45):
When you look at the labor market demands over the next let's say two decades, and knowing that these are two critical decades for us to really hone in on technologies and scale those technologies to sequester, to mitigate, to help with resiliency building across just our world, what are the two or three most anticipated needs in manufacturing that you see?
Mark Martin (29:14):
I was looking at the labor market information, and I think one of the things is we obviously hear a lot about automation. And so what automation does is typically get rid of the lower skill level manual jobs that don't require a lot of training. But what we will need then is people to install and maintain those. So industrial maintenance is kind of a career pathway, which it kind of encompasses... There's also kind of robotics and automation, and the question we all have is as well, how different is that?
(29:43):
There's kind of this encompassing thing, anything dealing with automation, either you're installing it, you're repairing it, you're maintaining it. So that type of career is going to be important. And also then just machinists and welders. You still have to cut metal, you still have to join metal, and between the manufacturing side of things and the infrastructure side of things these are going to be huge requirements.
(30:04):
As you start to put in more charging stations, obviously you need the electricians, you need the companies that are building the charging stations, which need machinists, which need welders, which need the electronic techs, which need industrial maintenance techs, so it's a huge need for these types of positions, and it's going to grow. It's going to continue to grow both based on those needs with the recent funding for the bipartisan infrastructure law, and the IRA, and the CHIPS Act, along with the retirements that are coming because the baby boomers have been hitting that retirement age.
Yin Lu (30:39):
What do those numbers look like, the people who are [inaudible 00:30:42] out of the manufacturing sector and the people that are coming in?
Mark Martin (30:45):
Yeah. I heard this talk the other day. I think there were... I want to say it's like 70 million baby boomers, and they're just starting retiring for the last 10 years or so. And I think the ones replacing them kind of at the millennial, Gen Z, I can't remember, are fewer by 10 million or so. So there's going to be a huge... As these baby boomers who are holding these skilled trades positions are retiring, there's fewer people to replace them both from a overall population demographic that you can pull from and just maybe an interest level as well, because those younger kids are not as aware of these types of positions.
Yin Lu (31:27):
Got you. And thinking about... We've been talking about California Bay Area specifically. If we zoom out to look at the US and we're seeing some policy changes happening on really trying to stimulate the skills trades, workforce development, I'm curious if you've looked into any international case studies. I'm thinking about countries that are known for manufacturing like China, Japan, Germany, in addition to the US. Any learnings from those economies on the private sector side or the policy side that we can take?
Mark Martin (32:00):
First off, the hiring and finding people in the skilled trades is not just a Bay Area or California thing, which is... There's concern about that because of the cost of housing and how much it costs to live in the Bay Area. It's across the US. I hear of it from the east coast, Austin area, other areas, that they are having problems finding the people for these jobs.
(32:23):
Internationally, I think one of the things we've worked on is apprenticeships, which an apprenticeship is basically what they call also earn and learn, but it's basically the idea that you bring someone in to the company, you train them, you mentor them, you kind of rotate them through different skill sets. Typically they're required to take outside training as well, so a lot of times it's at the community colleges, and that sort of to build your core skillset of skilled tradespeople from within versus trying to just say, hey, we need a machinist. Let's go hire one. Say, hey, we need a machinist. It's going to take them a few years to train them, but let's get started now and either hire somebody from within the company or bring somebody in at a lower level.
(33:07):
And so I think that's one of the models that has been around. I mean, we've been doing that in the US for hundreds of years as well, but is much more established in some of the European countries.
Yin Lu (33:17):
I've heard of the learn and earn model with being an electrician. You do your basic training and then you just start going to job sites and you learn with someone who's had years of experience, but you get paid for once you-
Mark Martin (33:29):
Right. Right.
Yin Lu (33:31):
Economic mobility is really important if we want to get more people into the pipeline so that we don't end up with a generation of young people that want to be influencers, which is what I heard is the number one desirable job in a recent poll that was done with teenagers. Anyhow, so it sounds like countries like Germany and Japan have robust apprenticeship programs in many skills trades beyond the audiences that we hear about.
Mark Martin (33:55):
I'm not as familiar with Japan. Germany certainly does. England... Germany probably has the most well-established and well-known one even among the European countries. It was interesting, because we'd assume that kind of all European countries might be that way, but Switzerland wasn't that way. Germany has had it for a long time, certainly after the World War II, not earlier, but Switzerland established a much more apprenticeship like system in the.. I think it was the mid-80s. So they will come over and talk to us about it, establishing that, and California is really focused on working on apprenticeships. There's a lot of funding coming through. I work on it quite a lot, and I think it's a great pathway to help people move into the trades and get them more interested.
Yin Lu (34:37):
Yeah. So I'm conscious of time, and as we wrap up I wanted to get your take on what do you think are the most effective tailwinds that we're going to see in the manufacturing trades over the next couple of decades?
Mark Martin (34:49):
Well, from an overall sector standpoint there's not only talk about the workforce, but obviously there's the need for work on changes in our infrastructure to mitigate climate change. So again, with the funding that has recently passed federally, and I think the overall consensus that we need to make these changes, there's going to be a lot of move towards electrification, carbon capture, technologies around that, so that's going to drive a lot of innovation and a lot of new manufacturing, because we're going to have to replace that infrastructure. And then again, overall the replacement of the infrastructure will drive the need for these jobs, so that's kind of a tailwind pushing it. And that along with the fact that we're having a lot of people retiring, means that we'll need more people moving into these positions. So there's going to be a lot of opportunities. So there's a tailwind in that respect, that the demand will drive that these jobs will pay well and that they'll get more people interested. And as people become more aware of these jobs and what kind of lifestyle they offer I think it'll grow in interest among the students.
Yin Lu (35:54):
Great. Thank you for spending time with me today. I certainly learned a whole bunch. I really appreciate you shining more light on different area of the skills trades that we haven't really focused on, so I really appreciate it.
Mark Martin (36:06):
Definitely. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Jason Jacobs (36:09):
Thanks again for joining us on the My Climate Journey podcast.
Cody Simms (36:13):
At MCJ Collective we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem solving capacity.
Jason Jacobs (36:22):
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Yin Lu (36:35):
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Cody Simms (36:45):
Thanks, and see you next episode.