Let’s say you don’t know anything about manufacturing: Zip, zero, zilch.

However, maybe you’ve heard about the Renaissance of American manufacturing: the transition from gloomy factory jobs of the Industrial Revolution to the reality of modern-day manufacturing jobs that are well-paying, require skilled workers, and can be fulfilling and incredibly important careers. Where do you start to look for one of those jobs?

The truth is that manufacturing is a blanket title for what is a widely diverse field. Manufacturing is to make “something,” and the thing is, there are a lot of “somethings” out there. There is no cookie cutter job description for what it means to work in manufacturing, and even if someone were to tell you that their field is in manufacturing, it wouldn’t help you an awful lot to understand what they truly do.

So, without further ado, we’ve taken a list of manufacturing’s most popular jobs from job posting website , and amended them to create a relevant, useful place to begin. If you’re not sure which category of manufacturing to look for, these are popular careers that attract plenty of skilled workers.

1. Manufacturing Engineering: If you’re interested in learning more about a career as a manufacturing engineer, you can check out our past blog post here. The moral of the story is that their goal is to make manufacturing processes cheaper, quicker, and easier to help increase efficiency and increase the profit of the manufacturer. Benefits include a higher salary pay compared to many professionals, which is one reason people are attracted to this profession. They coordinate the activities of all systems and machineries to finish all the production, so people who hope to be manufacturing engineers generally have some degree in mechanical, industrial, or manufacturing engineering.
2. Food and Beverage Manufacturing: Here in Nebraska, we have plenty of food manufacturers that tend to lean towards the agricultural or industrial side, thanks to our identity as a Great Plains state. Humans will always need food to survive, so there will always be a market for food manufacturing. Most people acknowledge that it is one of the most important manufacturing industries in the world, since it provides for our basic needs. Think bakeries, food factories, and processing plants for meats, fruits, vegetables, grains, and more when you think of food manufacturers.
3. Construction: This may not have always been the case historically, but the country is experiencing a massive resurgence in their need for construction workers. The construction industry manufacturers structures like bridges or buildings, so common jobs within the field include project managers, architects, and laborers.
4. Energy: On a similar level as food, energy is a basic need for many customers living in the developed world. For those who use electricity, energy manufacturing is absolutely vital. These teams will also work with the natural oil and gas and energy resources to ensure that the energy needs of the world can be met.
5. Transportation: An example of transportation manufacturing is happening at the Kawasaki plant in Lincoln as we speak, where they are manufacturing railroad cars for a new system in Washington D.C. This industry includes companies that produce vehicles (trains, planes, automobiles, boats) and infrastructure that supports them in both the public and private sectors.

Want to learn more about jobs in manufacturing? Check out our employment section here.

—

photo credit: via