CAREER FOCUS
Ready for Reshoring
Mechanical engineers are vital to any reshoring efforts, but preparation ahead of such shifts will be critical.
Written by Robin L. Flanigan
U.S. MANUFACTURERS COULD NEED as many as 3.8 million new workers by 2033, and roughly 1.9 million of those could go unfilled if current labor gaps remain unsolved, according to a report from Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute.
One answer is reshoring—bringing lower-cost overseas production and manufacturing back to the United States.
These reshoring efforts rely heavily on MEs, who are essential for designing and adapting production systems, developing optimized supply chains, overseeing quality and innovation, and designing and constructing infrastructure.
“We need a massive influx of new equipment, new factories, computers, robots—all those wonderful things engineers like to play with,” said Harry C. Moser, founder and president of the Reshoring Initiative, a nonprofit organization working to bring well-paying manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. “More production will increase investment and bring job security and growth opportunities.”
That security and growth is needed. In almost half of U.S. states, manufacturing employment falls behind jobs growth in other sectors and hasn’t yet surpassed 2019 levels.
The Initiative’s 2024 annual report shows 244,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs in 2024 were linked to reshoring and foreign direct investments.
“We want to increase manufacturing by about 40 percent,” and that’s going to take at least 20 to 30 percent more workers, including engineers, Moser said.
One of the benefits of that production increase is that companies will be able to purchase and install about 50 percent more capital equipment per year than they would otherwise, according to Moser. As a result, the country’s rate of productivity growth “will rise from close to 0 percent over the past 15 years to help make the U.S. competitive on price, quality, and delivery,” he added, and that will enable “continued reshoring.”
Knowledge growth
MEs can prepare for reshoring by earning targeted certifications such as Lean Six Sigma and GD&T, advised Al Ruiz, a senior professional recruiter with Actalent.
Ruiz has seen “a big gap and need for engineers” in the automotive industry, “so getting education or training in robotics or electromechanical learning” would be helpful, Ruiz said, adding that there are numerous online and college extension programs available.
In the Reshoring Initiative’s most recent survey, companies said their highest priority when it comes to reshoring is to have manufacturing engineers and design engineers collaborating efficiently.
One way to know what that looks like is to visit manufacturing sites overseas to see how things are being done there, suggested Aneesh Kaliyanda, manager of mechanical design engineering at Tesla.
“We need a massive influx of new equipment, new factories, computers, robots—all those wonderful things engineers like to play with.”
—Harry C. Moser, Founder and President of the Reshoring Initiative
Too often, MEs complete a design and then “throw it over the wall, for lack of a better term, to the other side where all the manufacturing happens,” said Kaliyanda, who specializes in mechanical systems engineering with a focus on end-to-end product development.
They typically wait two to three months, talking to an intermediary in the meantime, before receiving back a finished product.
“There’s no incentive or need for engineers to know what happens beyond that,” explained Kaliyanda, whose work spans the entire lifecycle from early concept and design through analysis, validation, manufacturing, and final launch. “But if you really want to make reshoring work, it’s about getting to know more about the process—the intricacies, the labor, the expense.”
Sights on success
MEs can have a core set of skills, such as specializing in computational fluid dynamics, for example, but “the more they’re aware of what happens when a product that’s designed goes into the hands of a manufacturer, the better able they’ll be to quickly make decisions and aid the process once it’s all done in one place,” Kaliyanda said.
This also sets up MEs to design for simplicity and, as a result, success. Kaliyanda continued: “Knowing your product’s requirements and functionalities can mitigate a lot of down-the-road challenges.”
Calls are increasing to pump up science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs to help replenish the talent pipeline with skilled workers, as dependence on foreign-made microchips and rising global instability threatens to disrupt supply chains.
Moser advises young people to enroll in a four-year apprenticeship program to get paid while earning an associate’s degree (on the company’s dime). Then, once the apprenticeship is over, he suggests earning an engineering degree at night school (also on the company’s dime).
“Now you’ve got the hands-on practical experience and all the theory,” Moser said, “and you’re in really good shape.”
To the companies financing all this education, Moser offered this: “You get the workers you need now, but you also get the future leaders of the company.”
Robin L. Flanigan is an independent writer in Rochester, N.Y.
© 2025 The American Society of Mechanical Engineers. All rights reserved.