This is the first installment in a two-part series, ‘Factory Work,’ which examines statewide efforts to fill manufacturing jobs.
In high school, Genesis Gomez took one manufacturing class and loved it, especially when she got to tear apart an engine and rebuild it.
“We spray painted it purple and it was shiny, so it looked pretty and it ran,” Gomez said with a laugh.
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Gomez liked all of her classes at CEC Early College in downtown Denver, but says she really enjoyed the manufacturing environment.
“Because I felt like I was actually doing something. Making something of myself,” she said.
The 18-year-old has since graduated and now gets to work at 5 a.m., at CoorsTek, an engineered ceramics company based in Golden that makes everything from orthopedic implants to ball bearings for jet engines.
On the bright, loud factory floor, Gomez is using a Computer Numeric Control (CNC) machine, a large piece of automated equipment that can cut and drill with precision. She fastens a small piece of ceramic material inside the machine, turns it on, flips the piece and then cleans off the powder.
Next, the part is sent on a days-long journey through a kiln and is inspected. The finished product is a mold for aluminum cans.
“Like soda, energy drinks, beer, all that stuff,” Gomez said. “This is what they used to make the cans.”
The CNC machine Gomez uses to make can molds requires both computer and machining skills; it can take years to master. Gomez is at CoorsTek to learn these skills through a new apprentice program aimed at training a younger workforce. These types of jobs can be hard to fill: a recent survey by the Colorado Chamber of Commerce shows that more than half of manufacturers struggle to hire for these kinds of jobs.
While numbers can vary over time, as of 2023, roughly 15,000 manufacturing jobs in Colorado were unfilled.
“It's very stressful,” Sean Grubb, the director of technical training at CoorsTek said. “You have customers that you've committed orders to, committed to making product for and then you don't have enough people to run the equipment."
While job openings at factories across the country have declined somewhat since last year, hiring has been a persistent top industry concern since 2017.
“So while job openings still remain significant, even though the pace of hiring has slowed, this creates space for employers to refocus on long-term talent development…like apprenticeships and upskilling,” Victoria Bloom, the chief economist at the National Association of Manufacturers, said.
State agencies are throwing millions of dollars at this problem. Companies and trade groups are working to recruit and teach, as are high schools. This summer, CoorsTek opened a regional hands-on training academy, paid for through a state grant, as it brought its young apprentices on board.
These apprentices make $19 an hour. Their workday starts early, at 5 or 6 a.m.
“So we're really trying to get back into the schools, get back into reaching people at a younger age,” Grubb said. “Let them know that these opportunities to make a really good living, really good wage, exist in manufacturing.”
This might be news to some. Hancock, a recruiter and the workforce chair for the Rocky Mountain Tooling and Machining Association says manufacturing has an image problem.
“Forever, it was dark, dangerous, disappearing. People thought of a manufacturing facility as a production line,” Hancock said. “Not automation. Not technology.”
Both the perception of the work and its availability has changed over time. In the early 2000’s, millions of American manufacturing jobs were sent overseas. Meanwhile, Hancock says that high school training programs began to shut down as getting a college degree became more important.
“Over the last 30 years, manufacturing was seen as a second class job,” Hancock said. “It was not seen as ‘If my son or daughter goes into this job they are successful’.”
The inability to recruit and train, plus the retirement of aging workers has contributed to trouble filling jobs. But, experts agree, this is starting to change.
“You look at the career education that is now in high schools, it has done a 180 in the last five, eight years,” Hancock said.
Andrew Sutliff went to one of these schools: the Cherry Creek Innovation Campus in Centennial.
“I knew I didn't want to go to college,” Sutliff said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, this is awesome. I would much rather do this than sit in a classroom for another four years.’”
These programs are coming back, in part, through funding for Career and Technical Education. In Colorado, 69 manufacturing programs operate at high schools across the state.
Sutliff is now one of the new CoorsTek apprentices. Working there when the program is done, he says, would be really appealing.
