Ask Pete Connolly what affects New Jersey manufacturers most, and he’ll start where everyone in the state starts: taxes and costs. But the CEO of the New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program also will quickly get to the bigger issue: Workers.
The sector’s workforce is aging, he said, with an estimated 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day nationally. Manufacturers in New Jersey already have roughly 40,000 jobs to fill. That’s why workforce development is at the center of what NJMEP does, he said.
Connolly made the case before more than 1,000 attendees at the Made in NJ Manufacturing Day last Friday at iPlay America in Freehold. The event, NJMEP’s 14th annual, also marked NJMEP’s 30th anniversary.
Despite this, it must be noted: Connolly sees reasons for optimism.
He credited Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration with regulatory and permitting reform that he said is starting to work. He pointed to improvements in transportation, including better NJ Transit service, the Gateway tunnel moving forward and new bus routes in South Jersey.
Connolly also talked about partnerships.
When he took over NJMEP four years ago, he said, strengthening them was one of his goals. The list of partners on the screen behind him ran from chambers of commerce to colleges to state agencies. Chief among them is the N.J. Business & Industry Association. As Connolly likes to put it, NJBIA represents manufacturing and NJMEP represents manufacturers.
The partners had their own messages for the room. Here’s what they said.
Evan Weiss, CEO, N.J. Economic Development Authority: Weiss ran through the EDA’s options for manufacturers of every size: small grants for tech-related startups, loans for equipment, tax-exempt bond financing of up to $10 million, and the Next New Jersey Manufacturing tax credit, which the EDA has used recently for photonics and pharmaceutical companies. The EDA can also work with a company’s existing bank to lower its interest rate, and it has started financing energy-efficiency projects for manufacturers in the $7 million range, he said.
Bill Noonan, Chief Business Development Officer, Choose New Jersey: A manufacturing project may start as a real estate search, Noonan said, but it quickly becomes about power, water, wastewater, freight access, workforce, incentives, permitting, suppliers and time. Choose New Jersey, a privately funded nonprofit, works with companies at no cost and in confidence as a single point of contact, pulling in state agencies, utilities, local officials and schools. His advice: call early. “Don’t wait until the search is complete,” he said.
Matt Coleman, regional administrator, U.S. Small Business Administration: Coleman said manufacturing contributes more than $70.9 billion to New Jersey’s economy and employs more than 253,000 people. He highlighted the SBA’s 90% loan guarantees for eligible small manufacturers, food supply chain businesses and energy producers, up from the traditional 75%, which he said gives lenders more confidence to back companies looking to hire, expand or buy equipment. “If you have the opportunity to make something here in America and in New Jersey, we want you to do it,” he said.
Nicol Nicola, director of economic research, N.J. Department of Labor and Workforce Development: Nicola gave the crowd a pop quiz on its own industry. New Jersey manufacturing employment peaked at nearly 900,000 jobs in 1969 and is now about 250,000. That figure has held steady for a decade and a half, after deep losses in the 1990s and 2000s. The workforce is getting older, and AI adoption in manufacturing has been slower than expected: about 8% of manufacturing job postings are AI-related.
Don Sebastian, NJIT, founder of NJMEP: Sebastian traced the state’s manufacturing history from Alexander Hamilton’s mills at the Great Falls in Paterson to Bell Labs. Its decline, he argued, was driven partly by policymakers who decided New Jersey should become a service economy, a mistake he said the national Manufacturing Extension Partnership was created to help fix. Thirty years after he led New Jersey’s effort to win its center, he said, NJMEP’s work in operational excellence, innovation and workforce development is what the industry needs as it reinvents itself again.
Matt Walsh, partner and practice leader, industrial and consumer products, Withum: Walsh said manufacturing was one of the first industries Withum served and remains its largest practice, about 10% of its people nationwide. Manufacturers, he said, still want advisers close enough to walk the shop floor with them.
All of this goes back to workforce, but doesn’t necessarily solve the problem or fill the need. Connolly said the answer can be found in the high school.
Through its Makers and Creators program, funded by the EDA, NJMEP takes a manufacturing curriculum into 21 high schools, one in each county, to show students that manufacturing is a career, and a modern one. It has help from partners such as Thorlabs, the photonics manufacturer, whose education team, led by Honor Roll recipient Bill Warger, brings hands-on photonics demonstrations to classrooms and community events.
The program will soon get younger.
In 2027, NJMEP and Junior Achievement of New Jersey plan to launch Junior Makers and Creators, taking the same message to junior high schools.
It’s the challenge Nicola laid out with her numbers. The industry has plenty of experience on its shop floors, but the workers who have it are getting older.
“How can we help them reimagine what manufacturing looks like today?” she asked.
Connolly’s answer: reach them earlier. Those 40,000 jobs will need someone to fill them.
