An estimated 31,000 manufacturing jobs will become available in the Fort Worth-Dallas metroplex by 2030, according to the Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center, an organization based at the University of Texas at Arlington that supports the local manufacturing industry.
Job growth in manufacturing has been primarily driven by an industrywide pivot to reshoring or nearshoring, which refers to returning manufacturing, production or service operations to a company’s home country or to a nearby country.
The pivot away from offshoring has been a national trend. The Dallas Federal Reserve Bank published a series of articles describing how “emerging U.S. worldview involves a more assertive use of tariff and trade policies and a growing emphasis on nearshoring and reshoring as tools to strengthen supply chains and boost the U.S. economy.”
The Dallas Fed did not reply to a request for a comment to this article.
Fort Worth has become a center of much of this increase in manufacturing, said Robert Allen, president and CEO of the Fort Worth Economic Development Partnership.
“With the addition of companies like MP Materials and Wistron, we are seeing Fort Worth become a major player in manufacturing,” he said. “And in our inbound pipeline, we have seen aerospace and defense projects double in volume from the previous year with big increases in advanced manufacturing and corporate operations. When it comes to manufacturing, Fort Worth is fast becoming the place to be.”
Data showed manufacturing jobs grew by 11% statewide, compared to around 3.5% nationally between 2021 and 2024, TMAC data showed. Job growth in North Texas grew to around 9%, respectively.
Brittany Rosenberg, a TMAC business development officer who started her career in finance after graduating from the University of Texas at Arlington with a degree in English and literature, moved into manufacturing with a startup focused on producing post-consumer biodegradable plastics around 2016. She said she believes Texas is a prime location for companies to set up business.
“Manufacturing is the future of Texas,” Rosenberg said, a business development officer at the Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center. “It is the future of America. It is 100% coming back and moving forward, for lots of reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is quality control. … Offshoring presented lots and lots of quality control issues.”
The most affected industries were aerospace and defense, as well as medical and food and beverage, Rosenberg said.
However, manufacturing employers continue to report workforce challenges, citing difficulty finding technically capable workers, experienced workers and workers who could communicate well, were reported as the number one barrier to industry growth by manufacturing employers, according to TMAC data presented at the DFW Manufacturing Leadership Summit in September.
Employers also reported that around 51% of roles requiring mid-level skills remain vacant.
“Workforce has been the number one barrier to growth reported for the past five years, overwhelmingly,” Rosenberg said. “Any manufacturer, any industry, any stage, workforce is the issue.”
Even organizations like NASA have been affected by this, she added.
“NASA even recently did a study trying to figure out why they can’t get their parts on time,” she said. “Essentially what they found was that their tier two, three and four suppliers all have workforce issues, and we have great people here in Texas, especially DFW. We just didn’t train for manufacturing.”
Rebecca Heliot is a freelance reporter who previously served as a business reporter for The Oklahoman. She specializes in general assignment business reporting, features and breaking news. Her work has been published in The Oklahoman, USA Today, Community Impact, Houston Chronicle and more. Contact her at rebecca.heliot@fortworthreport.org.
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