by Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix
October 14, 2025
While Florida leads the nation in attracting and developing skilled workers, headwinds are approaching, according to Florida Commerce Secretary Alex Kelly.
Florida is now third in the nation in terms of total manufacturing companies, but only 10th in the number of manufacturing employees, at approximately 430,000. Since 2014, Florida has increased manufacturing employment by 23.3% and, in 2022, the average annual wage for manufacturing jobs was more than $74,000, according to the 2023 Florida Manufacturing Report.
Speaking before the House Careers and Workforce Subcommittee on Tuesday, Kelly discussed what he said was a “huge challenge” in getting young people interested in working in a skilled labor environment, saying a high salary isn’t always the driving factor.
And he said that more than 50% of Florida’s manufacturing workforce is 45 years or older.
“Which is very disproportionately different than most of our other workforce sectors in Florida,” he said. “So, for all we’re doing, we’re just simply aging our retirements out of our manufacturing sector … faster than people coming into it.”
The nature of the state’s retiring workforce will remain constant until approximately 2035, Kelly said, when it will “arc back in the other direction. But that’s a 10-year challenge for us that will definitely require a lot of policymaking thought.”
That remark prompted state Rep. Rep. Allison Tant, D-Tallahassee, to ask the three members of the business community also appearing before the committee whether they were doing anything specifically to draw younger people into industry, specifically middle-school students, to avoid attrition in the manufacturing workforce before 2035.
Andy Norman, president and CEO of Lakeland’s GMF Steel, said it would take a combination of public and private efforts to encourage young people to enter trades and, specifically, construction management in the case of his company.
“We’re only graduating 250 students a year in the entire state of Florida in construction management out of five [state] universities,” he said, adding that the largest number is coming from the University of Florida, but only between 65 and 70 students.
He noted that as the largest producer of tonnage of structural steel in the state, “we’re having to train every single aspect of it because there’ s no formal training” at either a four-year or a technical institution for the skills required to work at his company.
Eddie Gonzalez Loumiet, chairman of the board at Ruvos, a Tallahassee IT services company, expressed concern about outdated computers in the K-12 school system, but said a real opportunity lies in teaching digital literacy to the parents of those students.
When Rick Scott led Florida as governor from 2011-2019, his administration offered hundreds of millions of dollars in economic incentives to recruit out-of-state businesses.
Committee Chairwoman Tiffany Esposito, R-Fort Myers, asked Kelly where he was philosophically when it comes to offering tax incentives to recruit businesses to Florida.
Kelly replied that the two biggest drivers for companies considering coming to Florida is the quality of the workforce and the physical location.
“No company is going to go somewhere in the time that we’re in if you don’t have the workforce and the site that can be a great host to that company,” he said.
He added that when a company that begins the conversation about moving to Florida by discussing tax incentives that’s an immediate “red flag” to his staff that perhaps that company isn’t seeking to stay long in the Sunshine State.
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