The technician shortage in manufacturing and AI in onboarding

In May and June 2026, Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute, the education arm of the US manufacturers’ association NAM, mapped technicians in US manufacturing using data from the US Department of Labor. The study covers technicians in advanced manufacturing, in maintenance and repair, and in quality and laboratory work. The report was published on 9 September 2026. Between 2025 and 2030, employment of these technicians could grow six times as fast as that of production occupations. Together with similar technicians in other sectors, employers will have to fill 2.3 million vacancies in that period, through growth as well as retirements and departures; almost half a million technician vacancies in manufacturing are open now. The authors see AI as a way to build knowledge and instructions directly into daily work, so that less experienced people and career changers from other sectors can work independently sooner. They recommend redesigning technicians’ work with the technicians themselves at the table, setting out when AI advises, when it acts on its own and when it needs a human check, and teaching managers to coach their people through this.

Deloitte Switzerland surveyed how far factories have got, among over 140 manufacturers of different sectors, regions and sizes; the results came out on 30 June 2026. Of these, 84 per cent see measurable value from AI, but only about one in five applications has been scaled across sites or the whole company. AI is used most in quality (62 per cent) and production (57 per cent). The barriers cited most often are high implementation costs (43 per cent), and a lack of technical expertise and resistance to change (both 35 per cent). Nearly eight in ten see a risk that AI will disrupt ongoing production, and 29 per cent name user acceptance as a risk.

On 15 January 2026 the World Economic Forum added 23 factories to its Global Lighthouse Network of front-runners in digital manufacturing, and has recently made talent one of the five criteria on which it assesses sites. According to the network’s data, front-runners that link technology to workforce and sustainability programmes outperform their comparison group by 16 per cent or more on average. This is a select group of front-runners, not a cross-section of industry.

In the Netherlands the shortage at the heart of this is plain to see. In December 2025 the Dutch employee insurance agency (UWV) and ROA, the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market at Maastricht University, described the labour market for machine fitters (55,800 in work), production managers in manufacturing and construction, assembly workers and product inspectors as very tight, with further tightening up to 2030. For production machine operators the market remains very tight. In December 2025 the International Energy Agency (IEA) added a caveat for the energy sector: current AI applications do little to ease the shortage of technical staff, because construction, operation and maintenance are mostly hands-on work that AI cannot yet take over well.

How solid is this? The technician shortage has been measured, but the expectation that AI will help close the gap comes mainly from consultancies and, in the main report, rests on US figures. A survey of technicians themselves is missing, as are Dutch figures on AI on the factory floor. The indications are there; the breadth is not yet.