CT aims to increase talent pool for ‘insanely strong’ manufacturing

Editor’s note: This is the second of two stories examining hiring and workforce development in Connecticut’s manufacturing industry.

Amid a pandemic, the manufacturing plant at 600 Orange Ave. in Milford still hums with activity.

The dozens of masked machinists who work there weekdays use metal-processing equipment such as manual milling machines and lathes, as well as computer-numerical-controlled machines, to produce aerospace-like parts that are intricately shaped.

“It’s not easy to do,” said Giovanni Noel, as he measured a part with a micrometer during a recent shift. “But when you have a piece that comes out nice, you feel more rewarded at the end.”

Despite their expertise, neither Noel nor any of the other operators are industry veterans. They are all students, and their workplace is the approximately 5,600-square-foot precision-machining shop at Platt Technical High School.

Noel, a 10th-grader from Stratford, and about 85 other students in the precision-machining technology program at Platt show how Connecticut is continuing to produce highly skilled students who go on to become manufacturing professionals.

Trouble is, this machine isn’t turning out machinists fast enough. The state struggles to generate enough manufacturing workers to meet a proliferation of job openings in a booming sector — in part because of enrollment declines in some key training programs.

But educators and executives are hopeful that new initiatives will help to eventually expand the talent pool in an area that’s crucial to Connecticut’s turnaround.

“I guess it’s a good problem that manufacturing is insanely strong in Connecticut,” said Dave Tuttle, the department head of precision-machining technology at Platt. “But trying to develop a workforce to make up for the worker retirements and growth in the industry is extremely hard.”

An undersized talent pipeline

More manufacturing professionals are needed because many companies have seen a significant increase in demand for their products and services since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Colin Cooper, Connecticut’s chief manufacturing officer in the state Department of Economic and Community Development, estimates that most manufacturers in the state have at least 10 percent of their positions open.

“Probably the biggest headwind issue in manufacturing and a lot of other industries is access to a skilled workforce,” Cooper said.

Decades ago, manufacturing training happened on the job at the big companies. Schools had programs too, and boys — because it was mostly boys in those days — would grow up tinkering on machines in the garage with their fathers and older brothers. Waves of people migrated to Connecticut’s factories, following defense and aviation work in much of the 20th century.

With the decline of that culture, as tens of thousands of jobs in the sector disappeared in Connecticut, training programs “atrophied” to some extent in the 1990s and 2000s, Cooper said. The state has renewed its focus on the sector’s workforce development over the last past decade.

As one of the most-important sources of talent for the industry, all 12 Connecticut community colleges run manufacturing programs. At Platt, the precision-machining shop hosts evening classes for students in Housatonic Community College’s continuing education in manufacturing programs.

But the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted enrollment, with the total number of students in the community colleges’ manufacturing programs plunging from about 4,500 in 2019-20 to about 3,500 in 2020-21, according to data from the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities system.

Community college enrollment tends to rise in recessions and fall when the economy is growing, CSCU spokesman Leigh Appleby said in an email. And despite sluggish growth, he said, “we have seen a consistent decline since the Great Recession.”

But Appleby added, the pandemic recession “did not result in an enrollment increase and indeed resulted in a rather sharp decrease...This is a national phenomenon and can be attributed to a number of factors including disruptions in transportation and child care, fear of getting sick or infecting family members, overall burnout and others.”

Enrollment in the manufacturing “cluster” across Connecticut’s 17 technical high schools has maintained its longstanding total of about 1,600 students, according to Tuttle.

“If you look at all the manufacturing programs statewide that are in the colleges and technical high schools, even if everybody was at full capacity, we couldn’t match the needs of industry because more people in manufacturing are retiring and the growth of manufacturing is outpacing how many people the state as a whole can train,” said Tuttle, who also serves as coordinator of Housatonic’s continuingeducation manufacturing programs. “It’s a really serious issue.”

A non-college-bound ‘river of talent’

Cooper sees opportunities to recruit more students who are not college-bound.

State officials also see a role for parents to help encourage more students to consider manufacturing careers.