For more than half a century, we Americans have distanced ourselves from the making of our everyday surroundings. The counterculture of the 1960s and ’70s romanticized living with less—yet paradoxically, our per-capita consumption has soared. Then came the offshoring push in the ’70s and ’80s, followed by the globalization mania of the ’90s and ’00s. We fell in love with the notion that design could happen in America while manufacturing faded into the background, transplanted to cheaper production environments overseas. After all, modern agriculture has made food production nearly invisible, so why not let the same thing happen to factories?
Designed in America, made anywhere else was the mantra; We could transition to a pure service economy and the rest of the world would always remain, if not content at least compliant, fulfilling our ever increasing demands for stuff.
For a while, it worked—or so we thought. But in 2020, when global borders suddenly closed, it became painfully apparent that the nation that once outproduced entire continents could no longer manufacture even basic goods. The emperor had no clothes. In the years since, we have entered an era of constant supply chain disruptions—from weather extremes to geopolitical conflict to shifting trade policies—and have realized just how unprepared we truly are.
Recognizing the problem is only the first step. The real challenge lies in taking action. Who will do the work? (See: this tweet)
If everyone who posted on social media about “bringing manufacturing back” threw on a hardhat tomorrow, it still wouldn’t be enough to fill the five million U.S. manufacturing jobs lost between 2000 and 2010. Nor would it solve the issue of an aging workforce retiring faster than new recruits can be trained. Right now, more than 800,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs are unfilled, and projections suggest a shortfall of 2.1 million by 2030—even after accounting for population growth and immigration trends.
To put 2.1 million missing workers in perspective, imagine waking up to discover that the combined populations of San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Fort Worth had disappeared overnight. This gaping hole in our economic future isn’t going to be fixed by “raising awareness,” investing token amounts in high-visibility goods, or hoping demographic shifts overseas magically save us. If reindustrialization is a global competition, the United States is nowhere near first place, and we need to realize that if we are going to improve our standing.
Consider our engineering pipeline alone. We graduate about 80,000 engineers per year, compared to China’s 600,000. Even after adding vocational and training programs, America’s totals look paltry next to millions of new Chinese engineers. Yes, China’s population is roughly four times ours, but even on a per-capita basis we lag behind smaller countries like Germany. If we trained engineers at Germany’s per-capita rate, we would almost quadruple the number of skilled workers entering our industrial base. Germany has its own challenges employing that talent effectively, but it proves that a higher-output model is indeed possible in Western democracies.
Inaction is Not Neutrality
In order to go on an adventure one must answer its call, and make no mistake that meeting the challenge of 2 million missing American factory workers will be as grand an adventure as the most compelling stories from America’s first industrialization. Facing a challenge of this magnitude, where the outcome will dictate the economic, technological, and political future of our species, means we either rise to meet it—or we don’t. Refusing to act comes in many forms, but none leave the refuser blameless.
When local power-brokers block a new factory, they don’t stop the production of those goods; they only ensure that another region (possibly overseas) benefits from the jobs and economic growth. When regulators needlessly stall a new technology, they don’t kill its development; they simply hand the opportunity to others not under their jurisdiction. And when private investors overlook domestic manufacturing companies, they don’t halt profit generation; they just push it—and the resulting returns—to investors overseas, in places that don’t prioritize America first.
A perfect example is the commercial drone industry in the United States. The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) cautious rulemaking effectively held back domestic drone development. Strict limits on flight altitude and operational areas, combined with drawn-out approval timelines, forced many U.S. drone companies to operate in legal limbo, move their efforts abroad, or shutter entirely. Meanwhile, international competitors, especially in China, face fewer regulatory hurdles, giving them a massive advantage. Simply put, when we fail to act, we don’t remain in the same place—we fall behind.
Yet we Americans are not inherently passive. Throughout my career, I’ve visited towns all over the United States to help companies and inventors develop products, and in every single place—from one-stoplight villages in the rural Northeast to the tech hubs of the Bay Area—I see people brimming with new ideas. Our national reflex to innovate and create hasn’t vanished; it’s just waiting for an honest invitation to do so.
A powerful example is Muskegon, Michigan—a community of roughly 38,000 on the shore of Lake Michigan. At its birth, Muskegon rapidly grew to one of the nation’s leading sources of lumber. During World War II, it was so industrious that it produced nearly a third of all engines for Sherman tanks. There are stories of local factories that made mops by day and, fueled by patriotism, switched to manufacturing machine gun parts by night. Today, Muskegon retains some manufacturing capacity, but it has largely transitioned into a quieter resort town with some businesses and organizations closing for 6 months out of the year. The energy that built Muskegon, and the rest of America’s industrial might, isn’t gone. It’s just waiting to be channeled, as you can hear when you talk to historians who teach Muskegon’s youth about their history.
I’ve been lucky enough to spend time in Muskegon helping local educators show the next generation the joy of creation. Over the past 15 years, while bringing manufacturing tools into communities, I’ve witnessed the same scene countless times: a group of children watching intently as a machine prints a new product from thin air—and the spark of wonder in their eyes.
To turn that spark into a flame, it’s crucial to offer hardware that isn’t just for technically minded hobbyists. That’s why the Orchard manufacturing units we build at Itemfarm each have fourteen build areas, where a whole classroom can watch their ideas printed layer by layer. Just as previous generations in Muskegon learned the lumber trade by harvesting from local forests, the Orchard also makes its own 3D printing filament from waste plastic bottles collected in the community. This gives budding engineers a full view of the journey from raw material to finished product. Since modern products are designed differently than they were in the steam-engine era, we also introduce students to the digital tools they’ll need. Alongside traditional CAD programs, we show teachers how to use emerging AI-based applications that transform text and image prompts into real designs. By combining accessible hardware, recycled feedstock, and cutting-edge software, we create a “hive” of hands-on learning right in the classroom.
The Boys & Girls Club where we installed this particular system serves hundreds of kids per day, serving as a crucial resource for a community that prides itself in its dedication to supporting the dreams of the next generation. The beauty of general purpose manufacturing like 3D printing is that you can see the breadth of those dreams in the products designed and made. On one build area you can see parts for an open source humanoid robot, on others pieces for a chess set, on another a cookie cutter that will be used to make baked goods for a club fundraiser, and on yet another a prototype for a project in the summer to explore Lake Michigan with mostly printed aquatic drones. A glance at an Orchard in production is a snapshot of reindustrialization at local level—grassroots, hands-on, powered by real skill-building and tangible output. The creativity of the next generation is endless, and by fostering that creativity with the right tools we can ensure that they grow up with a desire to play an active role in building our the 21st century.
A Generation of Builders
Americans do want to make things, and always have; they just need real opportunities to do so. That starts with an honest invitation: meaningful education, advanced tools, and the assurance that someone has their back.
Of course, reindustrializing requires more than just technology. It demands a fundamental shift in how we shape public policy and mobilize private capital. We need to measure our success by tangible production outcomes, not by how loudly we proclaim “jobs are coming back.” Government grants for workforce programs should focus on clear results: more skilled graduates, modernized factories, and higher incomes in revitalized manufacturing towns.
We also need to think differently about manufacturing’s landscape. The old model of a single industrial hub might seem efficient, but it’s also dangerously centralized—vulnerable to everything from cyberattacks to more active sabotage. In a world of growing conflict, we might find that having ten thousand Muskegons is far better for the country than trying to replicate one American Shenzhen. Just as a power outage at one Waffle House is no big deal when there’s another one down the street, decentralizing our manufacturing capacity builds resilience.
Finally, we must ask a new question: not “Why doesn’t anyone want to work in a factory?” but “How do we make building things exciting, inspiring, and financially viable for millions of Americans?”
Part of the answer lies in expanding training schools, apprenticeships, and non-college pathways. A four-year degree is valuable in many fields, but it shouldn’t be a prerequisite for every form of success. Students should feel free to choose the path that brings them closer to their goals—without being saddled with crippling debt.
Once this new generation sees manufacturing as creative, fulfilling work that’s truly within their reach, we’ll stop wringing our hands about labor shortages and start celebrating a renaissance in American industrial power. In that renaissance, we will all share the benefits.
We’ll rediscover the workforce we need in the same wonder that built so much of American greatness: the spark of creation that birthed a maritime empire from the forests of New England, turned 1950s Detroit into one of the richest cities on earth, and now welds steel into spaceships at Starbase. If we empower that spark—by offering real skills, local manufacturing capacity, and the right tools—we can reclaim our place at the forefront of invention and production, fueling our nation’s next century of prosperity.
