Maintenance Mindset: Why is the term "industrial maintenance jobs" trending on Google?
Welcome to Maintenance Mindset, our editors’ takes on things going on in the worlds of manufacturing and asset management that deserve some extra attention. This will appear regularly in the Member’s Only section of the site.
Something interesting in the area of maintenance workforce occurred this past March. Google searches for the term "industrial maintenance jobs" hit a 20-year high – not just in the United States but globally as well.
Results for that that term have tapered off a bit since March, but overall employment of industrial machinery mechanics, machinery maintenance workers, and millwrights is still projected to grow 15 percent from 2023 to 2033, which is much faster than the average for all occupations.
With these data fresh in my mind, I reached out to a few colleagues to ask if they had noticed any industry trends that would explain this particular upswing.
Tech-driven tools are transforming maintenance roles
“Ten years ago, maintenance was mostly invisible until something broke," says Nick Haase, co-founder at MaintainX and the one who brought the Google Trends stat to my attention. “Today it anchors every conversation about resilience and revenue. When leadership asks, ‘How do we stay agile through supply-chain shocks?’ the answer usually starts with whether the maintenance team can see issues before they turn into downtime.”
Part of the trend is that maintenance and reliability roles are becoming more and more tech-savvy, and less reliant on traditional fix-it tools. “While there are still a lot of clipboards and radios out there, within a few years, I don’t see that being the case,” says Haase. “The best techs still turn wrenches, but now they’re also photographing parts, dictating voice notes, and scanning QR codes to pull up asset history – all from a phone that never leaves their pocket. That fusion of hands-on expertise with real-time data is turning what used to be reactive firefighting into a proactive and metrics-driven craft.”
New career paths draw mid-career professionals into the trades
Jim Mayer, founder at The Manufacturing Connector, observed that the Google Trend data matched his personal experience meeting more and more people with university degrees and are now looking for a mid-career change. “I'm seeing that in the Ubers that I've been riding in, and I've seen that in the conversations that I've had with people who reach out to me,” says Mayer. “I'm very platform-forward on LinkedIn, and people are reaching out to me and saying, ‘hey, I used to do X, I think I can do Y. Can you help me get into the trades?’ ”
One example of this is in the realm of software programming, where Mayer sees the increasing levels of automation in industry as opening new career doors. “At a past Wectec event I was in an Uber headed to the Long Beach Convention Center, and I asked the driver the same question that I ask every Uber driver: is this your full time gig? He said ‘it is now.’ And I said, OK, what did you used to do? He talked to me about how he was a programmer for software, and he went through layoffs and decided that he didn't want to go back to software programming.
“And I said, hey, I don't know a lot about software programming, I can't program anything for you, and I don't know a lot about the engineering side of programming a CNC machine, but both have the word programming in it. Would you be interested in having a conversation to see if your skills would translate into a manufacturing environment? He said yes, so I connected him with a couple of shops that I knew.” The driver wasn’t able to get a job as a CNC programmer as his skill sets didn’t translate, but he did land a role in the IT department for a shop in Southern California.
Pride, purpose, and balance are drawing new talent to the skilled trades
Haase and Mayer both consider one of the big draws of industrial jobs to be the sense of pride and accomplishment that the work can generate, which makes the recent surge of interest in industrial maintenance jobs come as no surprise to those looking for a change in career.
Mayer adds, “I've seen a number of people who have communications degrees, who have marketing degrees, who have now turned toward the trades as a place that they have found to be like home because the industry brings a lot of pride. Whether you're making the part, or you're marketing that part, or selling that part, or you’re on the finance team for that part, there's a lot of pride in what people make in this industry.
“Change succeeds when the person doing the work feels the benefit on day one,” Haase observed. “Give a technician a mobile workflow that shaves minutes off every task and they’ll pull the whole organization forward through sheer adoption momentum.”
Mayer also added that people are looking toward the trades as a sector where “there's a sense of accomplishment, but there's also not a whole lot of things that they have to take home at the end of the day. As we look at more of that since the COVID pandemic, people have wanted more balance in their life. When you work for a small to medium sized manufacturer, you can have that balance making that transition from the corporate world into skilled trades.”
