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Kathryn Fisher with Can Van, a mobile canning company, places empty aluminum cans on a conveyor belt to be filled with beer at Devil's Canyon Brewery on June 6, 2018 in San Carlos, California.
Manufacturers are eagerly looking to hire an estimated 4.6 million workers in the next decade, but a massive skills gap is standing in their way, according to a new study.
With the tightest labor market in nearly 50 years, employers are scrambling to attract workers who have the desired skills for job openings. In January, there were nearly 7.6 million U.S. job openings, including 452,000 in manufacturing, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
On Friday, the government reported that the sector lost 6,000 jobs in March, the first negative month for the sector in nearly two years.
Average hourly earnings in the manufacturing sector rose 1.8% to $27.38. Both the growth rate and pay level is worse than that for the broader economy.
More about the latest jobs report: Hiring speeds up as U.S. economy adds 196,000 jobs in March
Employers in the industry are struggling to fill these roles because they have become more technical than they were in past decades, according to a report released by the National Association of Manufacturers.
Left unfilled, U.S. GDP could miss out on nearly $454 billion a year by 2028, according to NAM.
The greatest number of job openings within the manufacturing sector are in transportation equipment, followed by chemicals, computer and electronic products, and machinery.
The skills that are necessary for jobs in this subset of manufacturing include systems engineering, project management as well as software development, according to Burning Glass Technologies, a software company that compiles data on current labor market trends.
These kinds of skills are highly sought after by employers outside of manufacturing as well, making it even more difficult for the industry to lure in workers to fill the openings.
To overcome this difficulty, NAM recommends that the public and private sector invest more resources in pinpointing the manufacturing jobs that are available, the skills required for those jobs, how much they pay, and making sure that job seekers are made more aware of them.
