NPR This is the indicator for Planet Money. I'm Adrian Ma.

And I'm Darien Woods, and it is Jobs Friday.

It's that time of the month when we take the temperature of the American jobs market,

and we see how the economy is working for everyday people.

In August, 142,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy.

That's a little on the soft side, especially given that previous month's jobs numbers were

revised down.

There were some bright spots though.

Unemployment ticked down slightly to 4.2%, 34,000 new

construction jobs were created and while manufacturing jobs were down last

month long term the trades will be needed.

And that's why today we're going to focus on manufacturing jobs.

According to a recent report by the consulting firm Deloitte,

the US manufacturing industry could need as

many as 3.8 million new employees over the next decade. And yet about half those

jobs could go unfilled. So it's a bit of a problem in need of some kind of solution.

And when Dan L Epps learned about this projected labor shortage,

his mind started racing.

It was kind of baffling to me. I learned that these jobs were very good paying jobs. I couldn't you know

understand why there was this labor shortage in this inability to find talent when there were so many people

that were desperately in search of middle class careers.

Dunel decided he wanted somehow to help bridge that gap.

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