To the Editor:

“Revive Manufacturing? Factories Can’t Fill Jobs Now” (Business, June 25) rightly highlights the demographic and cultural forces driving the shrinking pipeline of skilled workers. But too much of the conversation frames employers as passive recipients of talent, rather than active participants in developing it.

Employers must move from a just-in-time approach to talent to a long-term investment strategy — starting with youth apprenticeship and other forms of work-based learning. The workplace must become an extension of the classroom, where students earn while they learn and build the skills that today’s economy demands.

It’s encouraging to see coordinated leadership from the Business Roundtable and efforts like the Workforce Partnership Initiative. But we need more, especially as work force and education programs face potential federal cuts. Thousands of employers nationwide must follow suit — designing youth apprenticeships, partnering with schools and embedding learning into the job itself.

If we want more young people to see a future in manufacturing, we need more employers to show them what it looks like — on the job, starting now.

John Ladd Washington The writer is a senior adviser at the nonprofit Jobs for the Future and a former administrator at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Apprenticeship.

To the Editor:

Farah Stockman’s article about manufacturing work-force challenges examined manufacturers’ struggles finding skilled workers. One recent Trump administration decision eliminates a promising tool to address this challenge.