Backgrounder: Creating A Manufacturing Career Path System in Cook County

Cook County manufacturers create more than 10,500 new or replacement jobs annually — jobs generally offering good wages and benefits.1 But Cook County’s education and training system does not provide adequate numbers of skilled people to fill those jobs, even though large numbers of area residents, particularly youth and those living in our poorer communities, are eager for opportunities for work. All told, there are some 404,000 manufacturing jobs in Cook County.2 In a sense, all of them are being put at risk by our failure to ensure that regional