Carl March, Stanley Black & Decker’s director of Industry 4.0, leads a tour of the company’s manufactory at 1 Constitution Plaza in Hartford.

Stanley Black & Decker’s engineered fastening facility is located at 4 Shelter Rock Lane in Danbury, Conn.

Stanley Black & Decker’s manufactory is located at 1 Constitution Plaza in Hartford, Conn.

Stanley Black & Decker’s manufactory is located at 1 Constitution Plaza in Hartford, Conn.

Stanley Black & Decker’s manufactory is located at 1 Constitution Plaza in Hartford, Conn.

ASML’s complex in Wilton, Conn, is the Netherlands-headquartered company’s largest research-and-development and manufacturing site in the U.S.

Instructions for how to put on gear needed to enter a cleanroom are posted at the ASML complex in Wilton, Conn. It is the Netherlands-headquartered company’s largest research-and-development and manufacturing site in the U.S.

ASML’s complex in Wilton, Conn, is the Netherlands-headquartered company’s largest research-and-development and manufacturing site in the U.S.

GE Appliances CEO and President Kevin Nolan speaks at the company's future CoCreate production center at 49 John St., in Stamford, Conn., on Sept. 27, 2021.

From left, UConn interim President Dr. Andrew Agwunobi, Gov. Ned Lamont, GE Appliances CEO and President Kevin Nolan, Connecticut State Colleges and Universities President Terrence Cheng and AdvanceCT CEO and President Peter Denious participate in a panel discussion at GE Appliances’ future CoCreate production center at 49 John St., in Stamford, Conn. on Monday, Sept. 27, 2021.

Governor Ned Lamont, left, and GE Appliances CEO and President Kevin Nolan talk at the company's future CoCreate production center planned at 49 John St., in Stamford, Conn., on Sept. 27, 2021.

GE Appliances plans to open in 2022 a small-appliances “microfactory” at 49 John St., in Stamford, Conn.

Editor’s note: This is the first of two stories examining hiring and workforce development in Connecticut’s manufacturing sector.

In the summer of 2019, Imran Abdool accepted a promising opportunity at one of the world’s largest manufacturing companies.

Today, after more than two years at Stanley Black & Decker’s engineered fastening plant in Danbury, where he makes Dodge-brand inserts for plastics, the 36-year-old believes he made the right decision to join the Fortune 500 firm following a stint at firearms maker Kimber in Yonkers, N.Y.

“Working at Stanley, I started to get back into the feel of having to make sure everything is perfect,” Abdool said in a recent interview. “You can’t just sit back and have the machine do the job. You’ve really got to be on it.”

Imran Abdool, a senior Dodge associate at Stanley Black & Decker, stands outside the company’s engineered fastening facility at 4 Shelter Rock Lane in Danbury, Conn., on Monday, Nov. 22, 2021.

Makers like Abdool are needed more than ever amid a spike in demand for American-made goods since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. After the initial shock of the global health crisis — which saw Connecticut lose about 8 percent of its manufacturing jobs — companies such as Stanley Black & Decker are seeing a surge in business and are now hiring in significant numbers.

At the same time, the defense and aerospace companies that are crucial to the state’s manufacturing base are also looking for new recruits. Already, the state’s manufacturing sector has recouped more than half of the nearly 13,000 positions it lost at the beginning of the pandemic, at least according to preliminary reports, which could be revised up or down.

But that’s just the start. People in the business say if Connecticut’s factories can fully meet the demand for new hires, the sector would not only recover the remainder of the jobs lost last year, it would also regain momentum it has not seen in decades.

That depends on solving the worker shortage now, finding more people like Abdool — and it’s not as simple as offering the right salaries.

“I believe that if we had more candidates that the manufacturing sector easily could absorb another 10,000 workers today. The demand is there for workers,” Colin Cooper, Connecticut’s chief manufacturing officer, said in an interview. “The workforce is a function of supply, and right now we just don’t have an adequate supply.”

Many manufacturers in Connecticut and other parts of the country are hiring in response to escalating demand for their products and services since the start of the pandemic. The spike is driven in large part by a growing need for consumer goods amid the rise of remote working and learning.

On indeed.com, one of the world’s largest job sites, the number of postings for manufacturing and production jobs was up by more than double from the site’s pre-pandemic baseline, as of Nov. 26. Overall, job postings on the site are running 57 percent above the pre-pandemic baseline.

“Employers who are looking for production and manufacturing workers are really eager to hire right now,” AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at Stamford-based Indeed, said in an interview. “A big reason is that consumer spending has shifted towards goods in this entire pandemic... You’re going to need to produce those goods. And you need the workers to do that manufacturing.”

New Britain-headquartered Stanley Black & Decker — whose tool and equipment brands include Craftsman, DeWalt and many others in addition to the nameplate lines — has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the consumer-goods boom. Its third-quarter 2021 sales rose 11 percent from the same period in 2020, which were up from 2019.

Employing more than 2,000 in Connecticut, the No. 209 company on this year’s Fortune 500 list has hired about 125 this year across its manufacturing facilities in Danbury, Farmington and New Britain. It has about 30 open positions across those three sites.

At ASML, which makes complex lithography machines needed to manufacture microchips, robust business has motivated the firm’s plan to hire about 300 to 400 people in 2022 at its complex in Wilton. ASML already has 2,265 employees who work at the site, which represents the Netherlands-headquartered company’s largest research-and-development and manufacturing location in the United States.

ASML’s growth reflects its response to a global shortage of microchips, part of the ongoing supply-chain crisis that is driving prices higher.

“The demand for our systems is ramping up,” Joost Ploegmakers, ASML’s vice president of the Wilton factory, said in an interview. “The demand for chips is only increasing because of people working from home, with additional demand for laptops, computers and digital networks.”

Stratford-based Sikorsky, one of the world’s largest helicopter manufacturers, has about 300 job openings in its home state.

Since the end of the COVID-19 shutdown in May, 2020, demand for manufacturing workers has increased significantly in Connecticut and other parts of the U.S.

109 percent: Increase in postings for manufacturing and production jobs on indeed.com as of Nov. 26, compared with pre-pandemic levels.

57 percent: Overall job postings on indeed.com above the pre-pandemic baseline.

788: New job postings by CT manufactuers in the week ending Nov. 27, up 65 percent over the previous week.

Source: Indeed; Connecticut Department of Labor

“Sikorsky has generational roots in Connecticut and maintaining a local talent pipeline has always been important to the company,” Sikorsky spokesman John Dorrian said in an email.

At the same time, some manufacturers are setting up new facilities in the state. In September, GE Appliances announced plans to open a small-appliances “microfactory” in Stamford next year. It will be the first site in Connecticut for the Louisville, Ky.-headquartered company, which plans to initially create 25 jobs in the new location.

“We’ve been under a business transformation at GE Appliances, and it’s guided by a philosophy we like to call ‘zero distance,’” GE Appliances CEO and President Kevin Nolan said at a Sept. 27 press conference at the microfactory site. “That transformation has brought us here. To be zero distance means we have to be with our customers.”

The unfilled manufacturing jobs parallel pandemic-era labor shortages in other sectors, notably restaurants. The worker scarcity persists despite a 6 percent state unemployment rate as of November, which compares with a national level of 4.2 percent.

But while food-service worker shortages are largely a result of wages and workers’ preferences for a different lifestyle, the crunch in manufacturing is more complex. Pay is always a factor, but the sector has also felt the impact of a lack of workers with the right match of skills; years of downsizing that sent potential employees out of Connecticut; a wave of older workers who retired and weren’t replaced; and longstanding stereotypes about its jobs being dirty and hazardous.

“Based on anecdotal data, most manufacturers in the state have “something on the order of 10 percent of their positions open, or more,” Cooper said.

By 2030, the U.S. manufacturing sector is expected to have 2.1 million unfilled jobs, according to a report released earlier this year by professional-services firm Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute.

“There’s a mismatch of skills versus openings in America — manufacturing being one that is very quantifiable,” Marty Guay, Stanley Black & Decker’s vice president of business development, said in an interview. “You’ve got millions of job openings, and you’ve got millions of unemployed people.”

Historically, compensation has often given manufacturers an edge in recruitment. In Connecticut, the sector paid an average annual wage of $87,699 in 2020, compared with an average of $75,411 for all workers statewide, according to the state Department of Labor.

Despite generally offering higher pay than the state average, manufacturers might need to increase their compensation to further motivate job-seekers, especially since many of them might prefer to work remotely as the pandemic persists — an option not generally available to those who work on factory floors.

“At a certain point, a higher wage will attract job-seeker interest since they can’t have that flexibility on the location front, which other sectors right now can,” said Konkel, the Indeed economist.

In Connecticut, job-seekers’ concerns about in-person work might be mitigated to some extent by the state having a lower COVID-19 infection rate — at least until recent days — and higher vaccination rate than most other states.

“I’m sure there are still concerns about the pandemic and being exposed to the virus,” said state Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, co-chairwoman of the state legislature’s Labor Committee. “Generally speaking, the reports we’ve gotten are that the manufacturing employers have been careful in terms of providing PPE. Many are requiring vaccinations or at least regular testing. I think the employers understand that they need to keep their workplaces safe and healthy if they’re going to maintain production.”

Other issues such as difficulty arranging child care might also be holding back some working parents from entering the sector.

“Another piece of advice for employers struggling to hire is to offer flexibility,” Konkel said. “It can present a real challenge for working parents if they are required to do an eight-hour shift when that does not fit with their family’s schedule.”

At the same time, longstanding stereotypes of the work being tedious, grimy and even dangerous continue to cause headaches for recruiters in manufacturing.

The reality is much different, according to Abdool. He works 10 hours per day Monday through Friday and some voluntary six-hour shifts on Saturdays. He has worked in manufacturing since he graduated from high school, after immigrating to the U.S., from his native Guyana when he was 16.

“I operate three Davenport machines every day. Yes, it’s manufacturing, and it is a little bit dirty. Then again, it’s what I do,” Abdool said. “Compared to other places I worked, the job at Stanley is not that dirty.”

And there is another key factor holding back hiring: “We’ve seen an acceleration of retirement, through attrition, during the pandemic,” Cooper said. “Those people have really left the workforce. Otherwise, they’d be on the sidelines, just ready to go back in the game. And we’d fill all these open positions.”

Connecticut lost more than 292,000 jobs in March and April 2020 as much of the economy shut down — a record-breaking loss for the state in a two-month span. Factory employment was not immune to the disruption, but it was less hard-hit.

“When manufacturing work was deemed essential and manufacturing plants were allowed to stay open — when so many other industries were on shutdown at the beginning of the pandemic — I think it gave workers a sense of pride in what they were doing to keep our economy going,” Kushner said.

Still, the sector dropped by 13,000 positions, or about 8 percent, in those two months.

Connecticut has seen times like this before, when it looked like manufacturing could see a resurgence if companies could find more workers. The sector saw an uptick of a few thousand jobs between the beginning of 1997 and beginning of 1998, for example.

But overall, the sector’s employment has fallen dramatically in the past couple of generations as the Connecticut economy changed and mass metal-production jobs moved to lower-cost places or were replaced by technology.

“The job numbers have gone down because the technology has gone up,” Dave Tuttle, department head of the precision-machining technology program at Platt Technical High School in Milford, said in an interview. “We can do more with fewer people.”

Connecticut’s approximately 161,000 manufacturing jobs at the start of 2020 were barely more than half the 305,000 who were employed in the sector at the beginning of 1990.

The state lost more than 70,000 manufacturing positions in the 1990s — and then more than 70,000 in the 2000s.

“Smelters moved out, forging companies moved out,” said Cooper, who formerly served as CEO of the Connecticut-based Whitcraft Group, a contract manufacturer of precision parts to many of the largest aerospace companies. “What we ended up with was a manufacturing base largely focused on the lower-volume, highly complex products.”

In the 2010s, the jobs drain was stemmed, raising hopes — but the stability did not lead to significant gains.

Nationwide, manufacturing employment has dropped about 20 percent in the past 20 years — from nearly 16 million at the end of 2001 to about 12.5 million in November 2021, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Despite the reductions in its workforce, manufacturing is still vital to the economy of Connecticut and the rest of the country. For every $1 spent in manufacturing, another $2.79 is added to the economy — a return that ranks as the highest “multiplier effect” of any emploment sector, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. For every one worker in manufacturing, another five employees are hired elsewhere, the NAM said.

“Connecticut manufacturers are generally well-positioned,” Cooper said. “They’re very optimistic about their opportunities to grow — and that ultimately will help us grow our manufacturing workforce.”

Now that the sector is hiring again in large numbers, the technological advances that wiped out many thousands of jobs in the past few decades could actually help to make manufacturing more attractive to new recruits.

That is because automation has eliminated much of the tedious and grueling work that once prevailed on manufacturing floors. In many workplaces, the needed skill-sets have shifted from detailed hand-work to managing an advanced process in real time.

“That individual on the floor is now doing more varied tasks throughout the day,” Carl March, Stanley Black & Decker’s director of Industry 4.0, said in an interview. “As certain things occur along the line, they may need to change that jig. They may need to reset for a new skew or product that’s coming through. Those are intelligent operations. That’s what humans are best designed to do, versus tasks that are so repetitive that they are just easily automated.”

Sikorsky is charting a similar evolution.

“Sikorsky is a high-tech manufacturing operation, employing digital design, manufacturing and sustainment methods that increase speed and lower costs for our customers,” said Dorrian, the Sikorsky spokesman. “These advanced manufacturing capabilities require an educated, adaptable workforce that is inclined to remain with the company.”

For Abdool, Stanley’s focus on technological progress figures among the reasons why he wants to stay at the company. In addition, he is settled in Danbury: He lives with his girlfriend in the neighborhood of the engineered fastening plant.

“There’s a lot of innovation here,” Abdool said. “I see myself working at Stanley for a long time. I really like the way you can move up in the company. It’s a great company to work for.”

pschott@stamfordadvocate.com; twitter: @paulschott

Paul Schott is a business reporter at Hearst Connecticut Media, writing about the issues affecting small- and medium-sized businesses and large corporations based in southwestern Connecticut, with a focus on Stamford and Greenwich. He previously covered education for Greenwich Time and general assignments for the Westport News. Paul welcomes readers' ideas and suggestions and strives to cultivate a robust dialogue with Hearst Connecticut Media's audience.