Over the last month, U.S. manufacturing has been flooded with investment announcements. Apple, GE Appliances, John Deere, Johnson & Johnson and AbbVie have each committed billions of dollars to new facilities and expansions.
The numbers are big. The locations are spread across the country. And the message is clear: reshoring is no longer just talk. It is happening.
But there is a big problem. Factories cannot run without people. And right now, the people are not there.
The U.S. had more than 415,000 open manufacturing jobs in June 2025. Projections show that by 2033 the industry could need 3.8 million new workers and that almost half of those jobs could go unfilled.
Immigrants make up about 20% of the manufacturing workforce. Their position has become less certain as immigration flows have slowed. If that supply tightens, the gap will only get bigger.
So here is the question: how can all this new capacity succeed if the workers needed to run it are missing?
A wave of new investments
The last 30 days have brought a rush of announcements. Apple committed $2.5 billion to Corning’s plant in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. The site will now produce all iPhone and Apple Watch cover glass globally and will also house a new innovation center. Corning’s workforce there is expected to grow by about 50%.
Apple also expanded its American Manufacturing Program to cover suppliers in Texas, Arizona, New York, California and North Carolina. These funds are going into chip production, wafer manufacturing, packaging and semiconductor equipment.
At the same time, Apple is investing in a 250,000-square-foot server plant in Houston and launched a Manufacturing Academy in Detroit to train workers in lean and digital manufacturing.
GE Appliances announced a $3 billion, five-year plan to modernize 11 plants across Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina. They will add around 1,000 jobs, bring back laundry production from China and build their most advanced plant yet in Louisville.
The investments are going into automation, tooling and upskilling programs. GE has tied this plan closely to partnerships with schools and apprenticeships to prepare the next generation of workers.
John Deere is planning $20 billion in U.S. investments over the next decade. Projects already underway include a $70 million excavator factory in North Carolina, a $199 million upgrade of Harvester Works in Illinois with advanced equipment for combines and expansions in Iowa for AI-enabled sprayers. Deere’s focus is new factory builds and advanced equipment that integrates computer vision and AI.
Johnson & Johnson announced $2 billion for biopharma capacity in North Carolina, creating about 120 jobs at a Fujifilm Diosynth site. AbbVie committed $195 million to expand its active pharmaceutical ingredient production in Illinois, with operations expected to start in 2027.
This is just one month of announcements. If the trend continues, the map of U.S. manufacturing is going to look very different in the next few years.
The labor shortage problem
The scale of the labor gap is hard to overstate. Manufacturing openings remain stubbornly high while other sectors have cooled. Companies are hiring and training but still cannot keep pace. Retirements are taking out experienced workers faster than they can be replaced. Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute estimate nearly 2 million positions could remain vacant through 2033 if nothing changes.
Immigrants, who make up about a fifth of the manufacturing workforce, are another factor. They represent more than 19% of workers in durable goods and more than 22% in nondurable manufacturing.
With immigration declining in 2025, the pipeline of available workers is under threat. For plant managers and operations leaders, this is not an abstract policy issue. It is a direct constraint on output.
The shortage is not only about headcount. It is also about skills and the nature of the work. Many of the new roles in factories require advanced abilities in robotics, mechatronics and data, and the pipeline of trained workers is thin. At the same time, manufacturing competes with industries like construction that often pay more for similar credentials.
The perception of factory jobs as dirty, dull or dangerous still lingers, even as plants modernize. And while safety has improved, manufacturing continues to have a higher injury rate than the private sector overall, which makes recruiting and retention harder.
Closing this gap will take deliberate action from leaders. It means investing in training so workers can step into more technical roles, making sure pay and benefits stay competitive with other industries and improving the day-to-day experience on the shop floor.
That includes tackling safety, cutting down on overtime and showing a clear career path. Just as important, leaders need to challenge old perceptions by making manufacturing a place where people want to work, not a last resort.
The risk is simple. Billions are being poured into capacity. But without people, that capacity cannot be realized.
What happens next
So how does this play out? There are really only two paths forward.
The first path is to do more with less. This means optimizing processes, removing waste and using partial automation to raise throughput without raising headcount.
Some tasks are well suited for this. Painting, welding, grinding and pick-and-place are repetitive, precise and have already been automated in many plants. Machine tending and basic quality checks can also be shifted to automation. These areas are where new investments from companies like Apple, GE and Deere are clearly headed.
The second path is to use human skill more wisely. Humans are not great at repetitive busywork. They are great at dexterity, judgment and solving problems. In many plants, workers still spend large amounts of time moving parts from one machine to another, checking simple outputs or entering data.
These are the kinds of tasks that waste scarce human capacity. Technology should take these off the table so workers can focus on what only they can do.
That does not mean robots replacing people. It means people doing more fulfilling work and being supported by tools that reduce drudgery. It means work that is more engaging and less boring.
When this shift happens, it not only improves productivity but also helps retention. Nobody wants to spend a career on dull, repetitive tasks. People want to solve problems and make an impact.
Why full automation is not the answer
Some might argue that the solution is simply to fully automate. But that is not realistic. Full automation often requires a complete rethinking of both factories and products. High variability, product mix and frequent changeovers make full automation extremely expensive.
There are also limits to current technology. Human hands and tactile sensing are still far ahead of what robots can replicate. Manipulating small or variable parts remains a huge technical gap.
Even if hardware improves, the cost of re-engineering products for full automation is prohibitive. For most factories, it does not make economic sense.
The future is more likely to be hybrid. Islands of automation will exist within a larger system where humans handle the complex, dexterous and variable tasks. Technology will support them, not replace them.
The adoption barrier
Even when the right technologies exist, adoption is often slow. Manufacturing is a traditional industry. Change is seen as a threat, not an opportunity. Workers worry that tools will replace them.
Continuous improvement engineers worry that their expertise will be automated away. This fear creates resistance. People hold back knowledge and slow down pilots.
The truth is that change management is just as important as the technology itself. Leaders need to make it clear that these tools are not about cutting jobs. They are about making jobs better.
That message has to be communicated consistently and backed up with action. Training, transparency and involving workers in the rollout are critical.
The competitive edge
In the end, the question is one of competitiveness. Plants that use new tools to make work more efficient and engaging will thrive. Plants that do not will struggle and may disappear. The reshoring wave is not forgiving.
Investments from Apple, GE Appliances, Deere, J&J and AbbVie show that capital is flowing in. But capital alone is not enough. The real differentiator will be how well plants deploy technology to amplify their people.
Factories that automate repetitive steps, free up human creativity and invest in worker training will be able to turn new capacity into real output. Factories that stick to old ways will find themselves unable to staff lines, unable to meet demand and unable to compete.
Final thought
Reshoring is the chance of a generation. Billions are being poured into new plants. But the factories that win will not be the biggest or the most automated. They will be the ones where people and technology work in sync.
Where workers are freed from busywork and trusted with real problems. Where every tool exists to make the job safer, smarter and more human. That is the model of U.S. manufacturing that can last. And the time to build it is now.
Maximilian Fischer is the Founder & CEO of Deltia. A mechanical engineer from ETH Zurich, he has spent nearly a decade digitizing factories across industries including glass, metal, mechanical engineering and chemicals. Having seen inside more than 250 plants and successfully digitized over 50, he now leads Deltia in bringing AI and computer vision to the shop floor to unlock real-time visibility and efficiency gains.
