October 08, 2025
Manufacturing, especially of semiconductors, offers college students career opportunities and stability.
Academics and insiders offered a hopeful vision of American industry at the MU Manufacturing Day Symposium Oct. 1 at Mizzou Engineering.
Event speakers and panelists explored the evolving landscape of U.S. manufacturing with a special focus on semiconductors, workforce development and Missouri’s growing role in the global supply chain.
United States-based manufacturers made 37% of the world’s semiconductors in 1990, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. Ten years later, that percentage had fallen to 12%.
Haitao Li, professor and chair of the Supply Chain and Analytics Department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, emphasized the importance and complexity of reshoring semiconductor manufacturing.
“This is a long road back that needs to be shortened as much as possible,” he said. “Not just supply chain, but manufacturing on so many levels.”
In 2022, the CHIPS and Science Act authorized roughly $280 billion in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States. The act included $39 billion in subsidies for chip manufacturing on U.S. soil along with 25% investment tax credits for costs of manufacturing equipment and $13 billion for semiconductor research and workforce training.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects that employment of semiconductor processing technicians will grow 11% from 2024 to 2034, much faster than the average for all occupations, with about 3,900 openings each year.
Many of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or retire, according to BLS.
Nicole Eldred Jaeckel, a senior consultant at accounting, tax and advisory services provider Wipfli LLP who spoke at the event, said young people sometimes associate manufacturing with dirty factories.
Jaeckel said the industry needs to work on its image and emphasize that manufacturing careers offer young people stability, growth opportunities and a way to pay off student loans.
“It’s really important that we get younger people involved in manufacturing,” she said.
The MU Manufacturing Day Symposium was co-hosted by the University of Missouri and MU Extension with funding from the National Science Foundation. Other partners included the Missouri School of Journalism, the MU Institute for Data Science and Informatics, and the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies.
This story was reported and written by Rita Catherine Hudson, a student in the Missouri School of Journalism.