Rebuilding America's Workforce: Innovative Strategies to Find, Build, and Keep a Skilled Workforce

By Dr. Wade Larson

America isn't running out of jobs. It's running out of people who can do them.

By 2033, U.S. manufacturers will need to fill 3.8 million jobs. Nearly 1.9 million of them are projected to go unfilled - a gap Deloitte and NAM estimate could cost the economy more than $1 trillion.

Most employers respond the same way they always have: post a job, wait for applicants, complain that nobody qualified shows up, bump wages a little, repeat.

Hope is not a workforce plan.

In Rebuilding America's Workforce, Dr. Wade Larson - 30-year HR executive, former CHRO of a global manufacturer, and founder of the Production & Manufacturing Institute - delivers the system he built, tested, and refined with real employers and real schools. It's called FIND-BUILD-KEEP, and it works like a flywheel: three gears that must all turn together, or the whole thing stalls.

FIND - Rebuild your employer brand, open pipelines into K-12 and community colleges, launch apprenticeships that pay back $1.47 on every dollar, and stop ignoring the second-chance hires, veterans, women, and career-changers your competitors won't touch.

BUILD - Map the competencies that actually matter. Fix onboarding so you stop losing people in the first 90 days. Train your trainers. Build an internal academy instead of buying training you don't need.

KEEP - Make career paths visible (the #1 retention lever for workers under 35 - ahead of pay). Fix the frontline managers who drive 70% of the variance in engagement. Bust the friction - transportation, childcare, scheduling - that pushes good people out the door for reasons that have nothing to do with the work.

Inside you'll find:

Real numbers from real operations - including a seven-manufacturer vanpool that cost $60,000 per plant and saved over $400,000A full chapter on why your best operator is probably the wrong choice for your next supervisorPractical guidance for educators on CTE, counseling, teacher externships, and building a community ecosystemA calculator-ready business case for turnover cost - and the harder case for the cost of doing nothingAction toolkits at the end of every chapter, with separate calls to action for employers and educatorsA complete 90-Day Action Plan: assess, prioritize, design, build, measure

This is not another white paper for the shelf. It's a toolbox for people who are done talking about the workforce crisis and ready to do something about it.

Whether you run a 50-person fabrication shop or a Fortune 500 plant, lead an HR function, supervise a shift, or teach the kids who'll fill these jobs - the crisis is national. The solutions are local. And they start with you.

This book is your playbook. Use it.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HDV89FGN
• ISBN13: 9798190596625
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 286 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"