Ten years ago, when AWB’s first Manufacturing Week bus tour crossed the state, we had many goals, such as highlighting the great jobs available in our state’s modern manufacturing sector and lending a microphone to employers to tell policymakers about ways to support this key pillar of our state’s economy. 

From the beginning, these tours have also been about students – connecting young people with key training opportunities and showing them some of the many ways that manufacturing can be a rewarding career.

This October, AWB will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the bus tour, visiting manufacturing and training facilities across the state over six days. In May, we kicked off these celebrations early, helping support three student-focused events in Spokane, Everett and Tri-Cities that engaged 300 K-12 students.

In Spokane, local school districts and industry partners put on a special one-day event to introduce 130 girls to manufacturing. Thirty girls from Ferris High School toured local manufacturers, HotStart Inc. and MacKay Manufacturing (both previous tour stops for the AWB bus), getting a behind-the-scenes look at their operations and learning about diverse careers in the field.

In Everett, the Aerospace Futures Alliance arranged a tour for 25 high school students to visit the Washington Aerospace Training & Research Center, which offers a 12-week program teaching the fundamentals of aerospace manufacturing and an expedited pathway to Boeing jobs. Afterwards, students saw careers in action at the nearby Aviation Technical Services.

STEM Discovery Day at Washington State University Tri-Cities engaged 175 elementary school students in activities like rocket building, fluid dynamics and meeting a robot dog. These students are the workforce of tomorrow, and they’re getting a firsthand look at the great career options available to them in a few years.

These tours highlight the range of positions in manufacturing – not just on the shop floor, but also in sales, quality control, purchasing, engineering and more. Increasingly, manufacturing jobs are high-tech, with companies embracing automation and robotics to boost efficiency and elevate workers’ skills. These are important opportunities for students to see firsthand. 

In manufacturing, entry-level jobs offer above minimum-wage pay, with plenty of opportunities to advance into family-wage jobs (average wage is over $93,000 a year). And the state’s manufacturing sector needs more young people to fill these jobs – both now and in the future. 

In AWB’s spring employer survey, one third of manufacturers cited the lack of qualified workers as a top challenge facing their business. Workforce shortages have eased in recent years, but remain a significant challenge. Twenty-two percent of manufacturers say they have positions they are unable to fill, and 80% report the greatest need is for technical manufacturing skills. 

Since the start of the Manufacturing Week bus tour a decade ago, helping to forge connections between manufacturers searching for good workers and young people in search of a career has been one of its over-arching goals. And sometimes, we even have the chance to see things come full circle. 

At Clover Park Technical College in 2020, I sat down for an interview with a student named Katie Pype. We had a great discussion, and I knew she was headed for a bright future. 

Fast-forward three years, to the 2023 tour, when we visited a small family-owned manufacturing firm in Kent called Motors & Controls. After a fun conversation with the second-generation owner, I walked around a corner to see none other than Katie, now graduated and employed. 

It’s just one small story of how manufacturing training can set young people up with important jobs – and help keep the pipeline of talent full so that our economy can flourish. 

Kris Johnson is president of the Association of Washington Business, the state’s chamber of commerce and manufacturers association.