America's manufacturing skills gap – and how it's threatening the nation's economic recovery – will be addressed by a panel of manufacturing and educational experts at a National Press Club Newsmakers news conference in the Club's Zenger Room at 2:00 p.m. Tuesday, May 6^th in the National Press Building, 529 14^th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 

U.S. manufacturing employs more than 11 million workers directly and creates almost seven million additional jobs in related industries. Still, there are roughly 600,000 skilled manufacturing jobs that are currently unfilled and 2.7 million manufacturing employees are expected to retire in the next decade. Because many manufacturing technology programs at secondary and post-secondary schools have closed in recent years, there are not enough skilled people to fill these essential roles. 

Newsmaker speakers at this event will include:

• Lackawanna College (PA) President Mark Volk, who hosted President Obama last year to talk about jobs and the economy and has launched a curriculum in the study of petroleum and natural gas at the two-year college;
• Manufacturing CEOs Jody Fledderman of Batesville Tool & Die in Batesville, IN and Ted Toth of Rosenberger-Toth in Pennsauken, NJ, who will discuss their own training initiatives and other programs to attract young workers to manufacturing, as well as ways in which the federal government and U.S. Congress can help close the skills gap in manufacturing, and
• Steve Nowlan, Executive Director of American Jobs for American Heroes, a program that focuses on addressing the skills gap by connecting manufacturers with members of the military.