The IE is training workers for a manufacturing sector that's shrinking
A new IndustryWeek essay makes the case animating manufacturing's workforce push nationally: the talent gap is a storytelling failure, not a shortage of able people. The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte put the national net need at as many as 3.8 million workers between 2024 and 2033, with up to 1.9 million of those jobs going unfilled if the sector can't close its skills and applicant gaps. The fix, in that framing, is supply — recruit harder, train more, call the work by a name young people recognize.
Run that diagnosis against IE data and it inverts. The constraint here isn't supply of workers — it's demand for them. EDD's May 2026 figures show IE manufacturing employment at 92,200, down 3,900 jobs from a year earlier, a 4.1% drop. The decline runs across both halves of the sector: durable goods off 4.0%, non-durable off 4.1%. This is not a region where factory jobs sit open for want of applicants. It's one where the factory payroll is getting smaller.
Meanwhile, the training infrastructure aimed at that payroll keeps expanding. San Bernardino Valley College runs machinist, welding, and manufacturing-technology certificates through its career-technical programs. The San Bernardino Community College District operates a separate Economic Development and Corporate Training arm that builds custom courses for manufacturers. And a $3 million federal Economic Development Administration grant would fund an SBCCD instructional facility expanding advanced-manufacturing, HVAC, and construction-trades training.
The mismatch is the signal. A national prescription built for a sector adding jobs faster than it can fill them lands differently in a corridor where the sector is subtracting them. For a community-college dean or a workforce-board planner, the operative question isn't how to recruit more students into manufacturing — it's whether the training is pointed at IE demand that exists, or at a national shortage the corridor isn't living. The skills carry over; a machinist or welder trained for a factory floor can move to maintenance, construction, or diesel work, all of which the same programs feed. So the capacity isn't stranded. But the clean version of the national story — train the workers and the manufacturing jobs are there — doesn't describe the IE, where the jobs are going the other way.