Womanufacturing: Rosie, the Next Generation
Great feature from ENGINEERING.com on Danielle Applestone’s recent presentation at Autodesk’s Design Night.
It takes guts to come to the heart of high tech, in San Francisco, and preach a message that is about putting people — women, no less — onto the assembly lines of America’s factories. In answer to your first question, Danielle Applestone, of Daughters of Rosie, tells the hipsters gathered at Autodesk’s Design Night that, yes, there are indeed factories in America. Just when you thought every part now being made comes off assembly lines in China, we find out that America still clings to the #2 spot in manufacturing.
At the event, we find out that 18 percent of all goods are still made here. Who knew? And that there are 12 million people making them. That’s a chunk of the U.S. economy worth over $2 trillion, according to Applestone. What is holding us back from making more is a severe labor shortage. We may have thought the shortage was critical in white collar jobs, tech especially—where demand is pushing salaries over $300K for some starting positions,—where all workers who can work are working, with jobless rates at historic lows. But the worker shortage is most critically felt in the heartland and in industry, in factories and on assembly lines.