If you think of it as dull, dusty, tedious and a dead-end, then it’s time to pay a visit to modern manufacturing.
In New Hampshire, it’s huge. It’s our top industry, bringing in four times the revenue that the number two industry, tourism, does. A full 95 percent of all exports are manufactured here and in the past eight years, those exports have risen three times faster than our overall economy.
Manufacturing provides jobs for over 67,000 people. They are good jobs that do great things. One company may not build the rocket that flies into space, but one company can make the vital components and make them better than anyone else on the planet.
This industry no longer takes place in your grandfather’s factory. Today’s plants are clean, modern
Manufacturing Matters in the Granite State
and high tech. Working in them requires some real skills – they are no longer places young people who don’t know what they want to do can go and pass a couple of years.
The challenge here in New Hampshire – and around the country – is letting high school students know of these opportunities right here at home – that they do not have to leave the state to find an exciting and challenging livelihood, that they can have rewarding careers in manufacturing where they live.
On May 24, the New Hampshire Manufacturing Extension Partnership and the Career Development Bureau of the New Hampshire Department of Education are hosting Pathways to Success: Connecting Manufacturing to Education.
The day-long seminar will bring together teachers and manufacturers to discuss ways to make sure students with the capabilities and aptitude for this kind of career get on the right path, through training, education and encouragement.
It is going to be a very lively and educational day. Speakers include Gov. John Lynch, Department of Resources and Economic Development Commissioner George Bald and others from the field. The keynote speaker is Bill Symonds, director of Harvard University’s Pathways to Prosperity Project.
There will be much to talk about and we hope you will be a part of the discussion. Register here today.
