(NTMA: Washington, D.C.) -- In President Obama's Feb. 12, 2013, State of the Union Address, he promoted several manufacturing initiatives but warned:

"...None of it will matter unless we also equip our citizens with the skills and training to fill those jobs... let's also make sure that a high school diploma puts our kids on a path to a good job. Right now, countries like Germany focus on graduating their high school students with the equivalent of a technical degree from one of our community colleges, so those German kids, they're ready for a job when they graduate high school."

A new survey of 199 metalworking manufacturers published by One Voice, the joint federal advocacy program of the National Tooling and Machining Association (NTMA) and the Precision Metalforming Association (PMA), underscores the severity of the skilled worker shortage. The manufacturers, which averaged 77 employees in 2012 (compared to 69 employees in 2011), supply components, tools, and other products and services to the agriculture, aerospace, appliance, automotive, defense, electronics, energy, medical, transportation, and other industries.

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