If you read our blog regularly, you’ve probably learned a few things about manufacturing. Here are a few of our big focus points:

• There’s an enormous lack of skilled workers, with over 600,000 manufacturing jobs open today
• STEM skills are a great pathway to a high-paying career
• There are a number of great careers in manufacturing–featuring a number of different skillsets
• Manufacturing today definitely isn’t what you think it is

What we’re really up against is a public perception that’s no longer in line with the manufacturing of today. Manufacturing these days is an awesome, technology-packed industry–and really, we love everything about it (couldn’t you tell?).

A post on the news-aggregation website  reminded us of just how much most people don’t know about manufacturing. The post is called:

“One Of The Highest-Paid Jobs You Can Get Out Of College Is One I’ve Never Even Thought Twice About”

It had us curious what that job was. And as it turns out, that job is a chemical manufacturing engineer. The post attached a great infographic, which we think is a pretty interesting way to end the week.

Here are a few highlights from the infographic before we show you:

• 77% of Americans fear the loss of domestic manufacturing jobs to other nations, but only 30% of parents encourage their kids ot enter manufacturing
• The average salary of manufacturing workers in the U.S. is $77k
• By 2030, 70% of skilled baby boomers will have left the workforce

They say that a picture is worth 1,000 words, so we’re not even sure how to start valuing this infographic (which happens to be full of words). But instead of spending too much time thinking about that, we’ll just let you look at it for yourself.

What do you think? Did anything that you read in the infographic above surprise you, or do you have any questions or comments about any of the facts it cites? Don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments or on –we always love to hear from you!

—

Image credit: National Institute of Standards and Technology via

If you liked this post, be sure to check out our other post with an infographic, called “What Is 3D Printing, Anyways?“.