An estimated 7,125 students attended the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Manufacturing Day last week in which factories statewide opened their doors to students to promote careers in manufacturing.
Some 290 classroom teachers and counselors, representing 168 schools and districts zoomed in to the remote event.
“There are great career opportunities that are growing and emerging every day in the manufacturing fields,” said Brian Crouse, vice president of education with the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “Some jobs are entry-level and others are high skill professional jobs but there's just a multitude of opportunities and they pay really well.”
Nearly 40% of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry's members are small, medium, and large manufacturers and they offer 270,000 jobs.
"There's a dire need to fill those positions," Crouse told the St. Louis Record. "A couple of years back, as we went into COVID, we started to realize that our manufacturers really needed more content and more attention."
Manufacturers that participated in the free event included Quaker, Pepsico, Nike Air Manufacturing and Innovation, Toyota, Boeing, Orscheln Industries, and Brewer Science.
“They all have plants of operations in the state of Missouri,” Crouse said. “Some have multiple plants. It just depends on the company but they all have a headquarters or operations here in Missouri.”
This is the second year that the event was hosted remotely due to the pandemic.
“We're able to reach students in rural areas at a better rate,” Crouse said. “We're also reaching students in urban areas at a better rate and we're showcasing employers from all over the state whereas if we did a manufacturing day event in West County or in Jefferson City, only a small grouping of students would go inside and see what these manufacturers do.”
Video presentations of the event will be circulated online to reach an even broader audience.
“Because all of these remote videos are recorded, put online and then shared with counselors, CT educators and other educators around the state over the course of the year, we know they will get played in the classrooms when they are on certain career modules or different types of curriculum pieces,” Crouse said.
The next event is a manufacturing summit on Oct. 27.
"We want to make sure that we have the right policy and advocacy platform in place for our manufacturers," Crouse added. "We had all of that in line before but there were a couple of pieces missing on manufacturing. One is trade. We want to make sure that trade is included in the policy and then also property protection or intellectual property protection rights."