Join the Roundtable
Workforce at Risk: Addressing the Jewelry
Industry’s Skilled Labor Shortage
2026 Rebuilding the Workforce
After the 2025 roundtable, where participants outlined their difficulties in finding and retaining a skilled workforce (see 2025 section below), the logical next step was to work together to find a way forward.
For TJS 2026, we decided to host another roundtable wherein industry participants can share ideas on how to solve those workforce challenges.
Generously co-sponsored by MJSA and Jewelers of America, the 2026 roundtable seeks to cover the following:
- review the workforce obstacles outlined in 2025
- hear perspectives from students/trainees looking to enter the jewelry field
- hear from companies who have found successful strategies for retaining skilled workers
If you have a strategy or program for successfully hiring and/or retaining the necessary workers, we want to hear about it. To share your story for the roundtable meeting, please contact us by April 15.
The roundtable will take place just before the start of The Jewelry Symposium.
Saturday May 16, 4:00pm
Detroit Marriott Troy
For those unable to attend in person, a virtual option will be available. Details to come.
2025 Workforce at Risk: Addressing the Jewelry Industry’s Skilled Labor Shortage
In 2025 the TJS Board recognized trending difficulties in the hiring and retention of skilled labor in the jewelry industry, from bench jewelers to retail staff to all types of manufacturing technicians. We discussed how this would affect our industry now and in the long term. Our team felt that due to the diverse gathering of industry professionals at The Jewelry Symposium May 17-20, 2025, this event provided an opportune venue to come together to identify and define these challenges together.
As part of The Jewelry Symposium’s commitment to the advancement of jewelry
manufacturing technology, we hosted a roundtable discussion just before the 2025 Jewelry Symposium opened.
Representatives from all areas of the jewelry industry were invited and encouraged to join this critical discussion. Almost 50 industry professionals, from different facets and skill levels of jewelry making and manufacturing showed up, and participated in almost two hours of discussion.
In the hopes that you, the members of our industry, will carry this conversation forward, we have posted the notes from this Roundtable here. We welcome your ideas on proposed improvements or solutions for attaining and retaining a skilled jewelry manufacturing workforce.