Gov. Ned Lamont’s workforce strategy for the manufacturing sector has pivoted in the past year, as his administration increasingly points to productivity improvements and automation as ways to bolster industry while deemphasizing job growth. At the first-ever Connecticut Manufacturing Summit, which took place Wednesday at the convention center in Hartford, Lamont nodded to the sector’s stagnant job numbers and played up quality over quantity.  “Perhaps our employment is not growing, but the quality of the workforce and probably how much they get paid and the skill set they need — the IT skills, moving into AI — is going to make the quality of the workforce more important than ever,” he told the sold-out gathering of hundreds of industry leaders.  (The event was co-hosted by the state Office of Manufacturing, the American Manufacturing Hall of Fame, the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology and the Connecticut Business and Industry Association.) As of August, the state’s manufacturing sector employed 157,800 people, down from roughly three times that a half century ago. It’s now been more than a decade since employment in manufacturing broke 163,000.  As recently as last year, Connecticut had set a goal — in its February 2023 “Manufacturing Strategic Plan” — to increase manufacturing jobs to 235,000 by 2033. That’s more than 77,000 more than the current figure.  But in an updated version of that plan, published nine months later and dubbed “Volume 2,” Chief Manufacturing Officer Paul Lavoie added a caveat. “Based on national population projections, it has become clear that we will not solve our workforce challenges with people,” he wrote. “To think that we will grow GDP with people alone is a fool’s errand.”  Lavoie went on: “We need to double down on industrial automation to have machines do the work of the people we will never have. This is not a job elimination strategy — to the contrary, it is a job growth strategy — because we will be providing higher-paying jobs with less physical demand, improving the quality of life for our manufacturing workforce.”  He made similar comments in a recent Connecticut Mirror story about state incentive programs supporting the manufacturing industry. It’s unclear whether industry leaders feel the same way. According to CBIA, the state’s largest business association, 80% of the state’s manufacturers say they are having a hard time finding and retaining staff. CBIA surveyed manufacturing companies for its 2024 Connecticut Manufacturing Report, released Wednesday at the summit — and the association pointed to the workforce as a top issue of concern. Roughly 8,000 of the state’s 84,000 unfilled job openings are in the manufacturing sector, according to CBIA. “The need to grow Connecticut’s manufacturing workforce cannot be understated, and neither can the barriers hampering hiring efforts across the state,” the report stated. Most of the state’s more than 4,500 manufacturing businesses are small, employing fewer than 50 people. They make parts for submarines, rockets, airplanes, automobiles, medical devices and countless other applications.  But both Lamont and CBIA pointed to the sector’s recent rise in output, which has come despite the lack of job growth. Connecticut’s manufacturing GDP increased to more than $34.5 billion last year, up from $31.4 billion five years earlier. Manufacturing currently employs nearly 11% of the state’s workforce and supports an average annual salary of over $95,000. “Manufacturing’s emergence from the pandemic shows the sector’s strength, with growth projected to continue for the foreseeable future. However, that growth demands even more skilled workers,” the CBIA report read. CBIA cited the Office of Workforce Strategy’s $70 million CareerConneCT job training initiative, expressing concern lawmakers may pare funding for the program in the next biennial budget. So far, CareerConneCT has placed 3,000 participants in skilled jobs in manufacturing, health care, IT and other fields. The program has a stated goal of filling 6,000 jobs by June 2025. Connecticut also launched the $24 million “Good Jobs Challenge” program, which aims to place 2,000 people in jobs in those same fields by developing close partnerships between employers and regional training and education providers. Both CareerConneCT and the Good Jobs Challenge were funded by federal pandemic relief programs. Lamont acknowledged that it’s no small task to develop the skilled workforce the next era of manufacturing will need. But he said he thinks Connecticut is up to it. “I’ve always thought, No. 1, play your strengths as a state,” he said.  “My advice to each and every one of you is get these folks when they’re young and reintroduce what manufacturing is. Show them how it is cool,” he said. “We’ll provide the job training.”