Key Takeaways
- Manufacturing needs to be “cool” again, attracting more of the talent that flocks to finance and law, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday.
- College graduates have been sending more applications to manufacturing companies, and a bit fewer to financial service firms, according to Handshake, a job board.
- Separate data, however, points to rising law-school applications.
Elon Musk wants to make manufacturing “cool again.” Some trends may already be working in his favor.
Musk on Tesla’s (TSLA) earnings conference call Wednesday said he’d like manufacturing to have broader cultural appeal, helping it siphon off some of the esteem afforded careers in fields like finance and law. (Musk, Tesla’s CEO, also owns SpaceX, another big company reliant on manufacturing talent, among other businesses.)
“We need to make manufacturing cool again in America,” Musk said, according to a transcript made available from AlphaSense. “We have too much talent in law and finance in America, and there should be more of that talent in manufacturing.”
Recent college grads are giving him at least part of what he asked for, according to some recent data—though recent grads were more concerned with job security than prestige, according to a report from Handshake, a career platform.
About 6% of job applications submitted by the class of 2024 went to manufacturing firms, up slightly from 2023 despite a 6% dip in the number of positions available in the field, the Handshake report said. Manufacturing companies got about 4.8% of applications from the class of 2018, according to Handshake.
Meanwhile, the number of applications sent to financial service companies ticked down slightly from 2023 to 2024 amid a 13% decline in open jobs, Handshake said. The industry still attracted more than one-fifth of all applications, making it one of the most sought-after fields.
The recent hiring slump in tech has also been a small coup for manufacturing, Handshake said. Amid industry layoffs in 2022 and 2023, students who majored in tech sent more applications to manufacturing companies, the group said.
The legal field may prove a tougher competitor. Law school applications are up more than 23% from last January and more than 28% from January 2023, according to estimates from the Law School Admissions Council.
