Reshoring in 2026 Doesn't Have a Land Problem — It Has a Technician Problem

Key Takeaways

• U.S. manufacturing reshoring and foreign direct investment (FDI) announced 244,000 jobs in 2024, bringing the cumulative total since 2010 past 2 million — though only about 1.7 million of those jobs have actually been filled.
• Two separate 2025 surveys identified skilled-labor shortages, not land, tax incentives, or tariffs, as the primary factor delaying or derailing new reshoring projects.
• U.S. manufacturing apprenticeships have grown 83% over the past decade — a real gain that is still, by the Reshoring Initiative's own account, far short of what's needed to keep pace with reshoring demand.
• Government-incentive citations in reshoring decisions fell 49% as pandemic-era subsidy programs phased out, while tariff citations rose 454% year-over-year — a sign that the reason companies reshore has shifted even as the bottleneck to actually doing it has not.
• Reshored facilities in 2026 are being built highly automated from day one, meaning the labor gap isn't for generic factory workers — it's specifically for technicians who can run, program, and maintain that automation.

The headline number, and the gap hiding underneath it

The Reshoring Initiative, a nonprofit organization that has tracked U.S. reshoring and foreign direct investment announcements since 2010, reported 244,000 manufacturing jobs announced via reshoring and FDI in 2024 — continuing a run that has pushed the cumulative total since 2010 past 2 million jobs. That's a genuinely large number, and it's the figure most manufacturing coverage leads with.

The number that matters more for understanding where the sector actually stands: of those roughly 2 million announced jobs, only about 1.7 million have actually been filled. A gap of that size, tracked consistently over more than a decade, isn't noise — it's a structural signal that the constraint on U.S. reshoring isn't primarily about companies deciding to bring manufacturing home. It's about finding the people to staff it once they do.

Why the bottleneck is workforce, not policy, according to the people closest to it

Two separate surveys conducted in 2025 both identified skilled-labor shortages as a significant barrier to reshoring and FDI projects — not government incentives, not land availability, not tariff policy. That finding is corroborated by direct project-level evidence: multiple reports describe factory startup and expansion projects in the United States experiencing real delays specifically because companies couldn't find enough qualified workers to bring new capacity online on schedule.

That's a meaningfully different diagnosis than what dominates most political and media coverage of reshoring, which tends to focus almost entirely on tariffs and incentive programs as the levers that determine whether manufacturing comes back to the U.S. Those levers do matter — the data shows tariffs cited as a factor in reshoring decisions rose 454% in 2025 compared with 2024, while citations of government incentives fell 49% as pandemic-era programs like the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act funding phased out. But the Reshoring Initiative's own leadership has been explicit that policy alone isn't sufficient: "The U.S. can't count on tariffs alone to restore its industrial leadership," founder Harry Moser said in the organization's 2024 annual report. "It must level the cost playing field and build a skilled workforce to truly compete and win globally."

Why this isn't the labor shortage of a decade ago

It's worth being specific about what kind of worker is actually in short supply, because it isn't what "manufacturing labor shortage" evoked a decade ago. Reshored facilities in 2026 are overwhelmingly being designed around automation from the start — built around programmable logic controllers (PLCs), CNC machining systems, real-time production monitoring, and increasingly, physical AI systems using sensors and vision to guide robotic processes. Industry analysis of the current reshoring wave describes these as "capital-intensive" operations requiring "precision technicians, not a return to legacy manufacturing labor models."

That distinction matters because it changes what the workforce gap actually looks like on the ground. A company opening a reshored facility today doesn't primarily need to fill an assembly line with general labor — it needs technicians who can program, operate, troubleshoot, and maintain automated and robotic systems, roles that typically require specific technical certification (NCCER, MSSC, or equivalent) and meaningfully more training than the manufacturing jobs that left U.S. shores in prior decades. Reports indicate automation technicians earn 15–30% more than traditional manufacturing technicians — a wage premium that reflects genuine scarcity, not just employer generosity.

Apprenticeship growth has been real progress against this gap: U.S. manufacturing apprenticeships rose 83% over the past decade, according to the Reshoring Initiative. But even citing that figure as a positive data point, the organization's own assessment is that apprenticeship growth remains far short of what's needed to sustain the current pace of reshoring-driven demand — meaning the gap identified above is not closing quickly enough to keep pace with announced projects.

What this means if your business is planning a reshoring or expansion project

• Treat technician availability as a site-selection factor, not an afterthought. Evaluating a location's regional technician readiness — existing training pipelines, community college partnerships, local certification programs — belongs in the same due-diligence category as land cost, utility access, and tax incentives, not a secondary concern to be solved after the site is chosen.
• Build workforce development into the project timeline from day one, not after a hiring shortfall appears. Given that startup and expansion delays tied specifically to labor shortages have already been documented across the industry, a company that begins building local training partnerships and apprenticeship pipelines before breaking ground is meaningfully de-risking its own timeline compared with one that starts recruiting after construction is complete.
• Budget for the automation-technician wage premium as a real cost, not a rounding error. With automation technicians commanding 15–30% higher wages than traditional roles, workforce cost models built on older manufacturing wage assumptions will underestimate the true labor cost of a modern, automated reshored facility.
• Don't assume incentive and tariff policy alone will solve a staffing problem. The shift toward tariffs as the primary cited motivator for reshoring, and away from direct government incentives, doesn't change the underlying workforce constraint — a favorable policy environment can accelerate the decision to reshore without resolving whether the resulting facility can actually be staffed on schedule.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the reshoring trend itself slowing down in 2026? Early 2025 projections suggested a possible decline to around 174,000 announced jobs for the year, down from 244,000 in 2024 — but that projection was revised upward to roughly 223,000 by the second quarter of 2025 as tariff policy firmed and the economy held steady, illustrating how sensitive year-to-year announcement totals are to policy certainty.

What industries are leading current reshoring activity? Computer and electronics, electrical equipment (including EV batteries and solar), and transportation equipment led 2024's reshoring and FDI activity, with 88% of jobs announced that year falling into high or medium-high tech sectors — a share that rose to 90% in early 2025 data.

Which states are seeing the most reshoring investment? Texas, South Carolina, and Mississippi were identified as the top states for reshoring and FDI activity heading into 2025, according to the Reshoring Initiative's most recent annual report.

Does the technician shortage affect small and mid-sized manufacturers differently than large companies? Smaller manufacturers generally have less capacity to run their own in-house training programs or absorb project delays caused by hiring gaps, making regional training-pipeline partnerships and community college relationships proportionally more important for mid-market manufacturers than for large companies that can build dedicated internal training infrastructure.

Sources & References

• The Reshoring Initiative, 2024 Annual Report (via IndustryWeek, Today's Machining World, Trade and Industry Development, and Reshoring Initiative's own release)
• Manufacturing America, "Reshoring Manufacturing to America: 2026 State-of-Play"
• HM Precision CNC, "CNC Machining Industry Trends 2026: AI, Automation, and Reshoring Insights"

Related Reading

For a look at a very different, white-collar labor-market trend playing out at the same time, see PrimeWorldMedia's coverage of "job hugging" and what it means for leaders — where the office-based workforce is largely staying put out of caution, the reshored manufacturing sector is dealing with the opposite problem: not enough qualified people to hire in the first place.Reshoring in 2026 Doesn't Have a Land Problem — It Has a Technician Problem

Key Takeaways

• U.S. manufacturing reshoring and foreign direct investment (FDI) announced 244,000 jobs in 2024, bringing the cumulative total since 2010 past 2 million — though only about 1.7 million of those jobs have actually been filled.
• Two separate 2025 surveys identified skilled-labor shortages, not land, tax incentives, or tariffs, as the primary factor delaying or derailing new reshoring projects.
• U.S. manufacturing apprenticeships have grown 83% over the past decade — a real gain that is still, by the Reshoring Initiative's own account, far short of what's needed to keep pace with reshoring demand.
• Government-incentive citations in reshoring decisions fell 49% as pandemic-era subsidy programs phased out, while tariff citations rose 454% year-over-year — a sign that the reason companies reshore has shifted even as the bottleneck to actually doing it has not.
• Reshored facilities in 2026 are being built highly automated from day one, meaning the labor gap isn't for generic factory workers — it's specifically for technicians who can run, program, and maintain that automation.

The headline number, and the gap hiding underneath it

The Reshoring Initiative, a nonprofit organization that has tracked U.S. reshoring and foreign direct investment announcements since 2010, reported 244,000 manufacturing jobs announced via reshoring and FDI in 2024 — continuing a run that has pushed the cumulative total since 2010 past 2 million jobs. That's a genuinely large number, and it's the figure most manufacturing coverage leads with.

The number that matters more for understanding where the sector actually stands: of those roughly 2 million announced jobs, only about 1.7 million have actually been filled. A gap of that size, tracked consistently over more than a decade, isn't noise — it's a structural signal that the constraint on U.S. reshoring isn't primarily about companies deciding to bring manufacturing home. It's about finding the people to staff it once they do.

Why the bottleneck is workforce, not policy, according to the people closest to it

Two separate surveys conducted in 2025 both identified skilled-labor shortages as a significant barrier to reshoring and FDI projects — not government incentives, not land availability, not tariff policy. That finding is corroborated by direct project-level evidence: multiple reports describe factory startup and expansion projects in the United States experiencing real delays specifically because companies couldn't find enough qualified workers to bring new capacity online on schedule.

That's a meaningfully different diagnosis than what dominates most political and media coverage of reshoring, which tends to focus almost entirely on tariffs and incentive programs as the levers that determine whether manufacturing comes back to the U.S. Those levers do matter — the data shows tariffs cited as a factor in reshoring decisions rose 454% in 2025 compared with 2024, while citations of government incentives fell 49% as pandemic-era programs like the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act funding phased out. But the Reshoring Initiative's own leadership has been explicit that policy alone isn't sufficient: "The U.S. can't count on tariffs alone to restore its industrial leadership," founder Harry Moser said in the organization's 2024 annual report. "It must level the cost playing field and build a skilled workforce to truly compete and win globally."

Why this isn't the labor shortage of a decade ago

It's worth being specific about what kind of worker is actually in short supply, because it isn't what "manufacturing labor shortage" evoked a decade ago. Reshored facilities in 2026 are overwhelmingly being designed around automation from the start — built around programmable logic controllers (PLCs), CNC machining systems, real-time production monitoring, and increasingly, physical AI systems using sensors and vision to guide robotic processes. Industry analysis of the current reshoring wave describes these as "capital-intensive" operations requiring "precision technicians, not a return to legacy manufacturing labor models."

That distinction matters because it changes what the workforce gap actually looks like on the ground. A company opening a reshored facility today doesn't primarily need to fill an assembly line with general labor — it needs technicians who can program, operate, troubleshoot, and maintain automated and robotic systems, roles that typically require specific technical certification (NCCER, MSSC, or equivalent) and meaningfully more training than the manufacturing jobs that left U.S. shores in prior decades. Reports indicate automation technicians earn 15–30% more than traditional manufacturing technicians — a wage premium that reflects genuine scarcity, not just employer generosity.

Apprenticeship growth has been real progress against this gap: U.S. manufacturing apprenticeships rose 83% over the past decade, according to the Reshoring Initiative. But even citing that figure as a positive data point, the organization's own assessment is that apprenticeship growth remains far short of what's needed to sustain the current pace of reshoring-driven demand — meaning the gap identified above is not closing quickly enough to keep pace with announced projects.

What this means if your business is planning a reshoring or expansion project

• Treat technician availability as a site-selection factor, not an afterthought. Evaluating a location's regional technician readiness — existing training pipelines, community college partnerships, local certification programs — belongs in the same due-diligence category as land cost, utility access, and tax incentives, not a secondary concern to be solved after the site is chosen.
• Build workforce development into the project timeline from day one, not after a hiring shortfall appears. Given that startup and expansion delays tied specifically to labor shortages have already been documented across the industry, a company that begins building local training partnerships and apprenticeship pipelines before breaking ground is meaningfully de-risking its own timeline compared with one that starts recruiting after construction is complete.
• Budget for the automation-technician wage premium as a real cost, not a rounding error. With automation technicians commanding 15–30% higher wages than traditional roles, workforce cost models built on older manufacturing wage assumptions will underestimate the true labor cost of a modern, automated reshored facility.
• Don't assume incentive and tariff policy alone will solve a staffing problem. The shift toward tariffs as the primary cited motivator for reshoring, and away from direct government incentives, doesn't change the underlying workforce constraint — a favorable policy environment can accelerate the decision to reshore without resolving whether the resulting facility can actually be staffed on schedule.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the reshoring trend itself slowing down in 2026? Early 2025 projections suggested a possible decline to around 174,000 announced jobs for the year, down from 244,000 in 2024 — but that projection was revised upward to roughly 223,000 by the second quarter of 2025 as tariff policy firmed and the economy held steady, illustrating how sensitive year-to-year announcement totals are to policy certainty.

What industries are leading current reshoring activity? Computer and electronics, electrical equipment (including EV batteries and solar), and transportation equipment led 2024's reshoring and FDI activity, with 88% of jobs announced that year falling into high or medium-high tech sectors — a share that rose to 90% in early 2025 data.

Which states are seeing the most reshoring investment? Texas, South Carolina, and Mississippi were identified as the top states for reshoring and FDI activity heading into 2025, according to the Reshoring Initiative's most recent annual report.

Does the technician shortage affect small and mid-sized manufacturers differently than large companies? Smaller manufacturers generally have less capacity to run their own in-house training programs or absorb project delays caused by hiring gaps, making regional training-pipeline partnerships and community college relationships proportionally more important for mid-market manufacturers than for large companies that can build dedicated internal training infrastructure.

Sources & References

• The Reshoring Initiative, 2024 Annual Report (via IndustryWeek, Today's Machining World, Trade and Industry Development, and Reshoring Initiative's own release)
• Manufacturing America, "Reshoring Manufacturing to America: 2026 State-of-Play"
• HM Precision CNC, "CNC Machining Industry Trends 2026: AI, Automation, and Reshoring Insights"

Related Reading

For a look at a very different, white-collar labor-market trend playing out at the same time, see PrimeWorldMedia's coverage of "job hugging" and what it means for leaders — where the office-based workforce is largely staying put out of caution, the reshored manufacturing sector is dealing with the opposite problem: not enough qualified people to hire in the first place.