SAN JOSE, Calif. _ Urban manufacturing has more than a hopeful future, even in the expensive Bay Area: it can be a way for people with modest skills to carve a path to middle-class wages amid the region's brutal housing market, business and political leaders said at a manufacturing summit in San Jose on Friday.
"We are all-in to expand manufacturing opportunities in San Jose," San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said during a presentation Friday to the Bay Area Urban Manufacturing Summit. "We have many people who lack skills or college degrees who can use manufacturing to have access to the middle class."
The push for more urban manufacturing comes at a time when factories have enjoyed a healthy upswing in jobs lately.
During the 12 months that ended in September, the Bay Area added 9,100 manufacturing jobs and the nine-county region now has 365,100 manufacturing jobs, according to state government data. Santa Clara County produced 73 percent of the manufacturing jobs added in the last year, or about 6,600 new factory positions.
"We want to stay here, we want to thrive here, and it looks like we might expand here," Michelle Acosta, director of marketing for San Jose-based Acosta Sheet Metal Manufacturing, said during an interview following the event.
Acosta Sheet Metal's business includes supplying sheet metal building materials to the booming construction industries in the Bay Area. She added that she likes the initiatives the manufacturing summit supports as well as a new effort launched by Mayor Liccardo called Manufacture San Jose. The summit in recent years has encouraged connections among manufacturers, labor leaders and educators who can help train the factory workers of the future.
"It's hard to find skilled metal fabricators," Acosta said. "We are thinking about possibly expanding to the East Bay because we have a lot of business there in addition to the South Bay. A lot of our clients are in the East Bay."
Demand is high enough that the Acosta company wants to be as close as possible geographically to its customers. Acosta has about 60 employees in San Jose, of which 50 are metal fabricators.
"Our edge is innovation, it has to be quality over quantity," Mayor Liccardo said in an interview with this news organization on Friday. "There are great benefits to creating more support for manufacturing in the Bay Area and in San Jose."
Despite the hopeful outlook, some local manufacturers conceded that the challenges in the region are daunting.
"The cost of living is a challenge," said Alan Takahashi, vice president and general manager of Cobham Microelectronics Solutions in San Jose. "Our location tends to pull a lot of skilled people out of the area because housing is so expensive."
Another big challenge: the aging workforce at some manufacturing companies.
"We have a lot of skilled people, but they are getting older and eventually they have to be replaced," Takahashi said in an interview. "We think efforts like the manufacturing summit and Manufacture San Jose will help to re-engage the pipeline of skilled workers this industry needs."
Liccardo also insisted that he will do what he can to ensure that Silicon Valley _ arguably the greatest economic success story in the world today _ does not become a region of haves and have nots.
"We cannot allow the story of Silicon Valley and the Bay Area to be one of greater and greater and greater division," the mayor said. "Manufacturing can lift so many people in the Bay Area."
