Thanks to retirements, blue-collar fields such as manufacturing and construction will have the largest number of expected job openings in the next seven years, outpacing other fields such science, technology and even health care, according to a recent Georgetown University study.

But there’s growing concern that many of those openings could go unfilled due to years of persistent misunderstandings about the role of manufacturing in the U.S. economy. A local committee of manufacturing leaders will soon try to address the problem through marketing and other measures.

Nationwide, there will be a total of 6.7 million openings in blue-collar occupations by 2018 due to the retirement of older workers, according to the 2010 study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

That number exceeds projected openings in the fields of food and personal services, managerial and professional office work, education, health care and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, the study said.

To fill those openings, manufacturing employers say they need to find and encourage young people to come into the field.

Bill Lukens, chairman of Stillwater Technologies, has agreed to lead a Dayton Region Manufacturing Association committee to begin to explore possible solutions . The committee may have its first meeting in December, said Angelia Erbaugh, executive director of the organization.

Lukens — who has served on Workforce Act Investment boards on both the county and state levels — said he has reached out to the staff of Gov. John Kasich and U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, as well as the National Association of Manufacturers, for ideas on bringing companies together for what he and others hope could be a national marketing campaign.

Lukens said manufacturers need something similar to a “Got Milk?” campaign, which was spearheaded by dairy producers.

A campaign is expensive, but it’s doable, Lukens said. He said similar attention has been given to worker shortages in health care and even truck driving.

Anthony Carnevale, the Georgetown center’s director, said while metal bending and metal-cutting jobs may be declining, “advanced manufacturing” involving clean laboratories, microbiology and medical devices is growing.

“It’s not dead,” Carnevale said. “Manufacturing in some ways is (an) industry that really is too big to fail.”

He believes the field will soon grow by about one million workers to 12 million U.S. employees.

This year it’s estimated the manufacturing industry in the 15-county Tri-state region, including Butler and Warren counties, will grow jobs an estimated 4 percent more than last year. That rate is ahead of the national manufacturing job growth of an estimated 1.5 percent up over last year, according to the Cincinnati USA Partnership’s 2012 Regional Economic Outlook.

Manufacturing employment increased 8 percent from July 2010 to July 2011 in the Cincinnati region, adding 3,100 jobs, but is expected to slow this quarter to end the year up 4 percent, according to the economic outlook analyzed by this newspaper.

The job growth still hasn’t regained all the manufacturing jobs lost in Southwest Ohio over the years — a decline of 12,200 jobs from July 2007 to July 2011 — but it does show manufacturing isn’t dead despite recent announcements of local paper manufacturing company closings in Butler County.

Manufacturing is the third largest industry in Butler County with 20,383 jobs, behind government and health care and social assistance, according to the Idaho data company Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. (EMSI), a respected data source in the economics field.

Dave Jones, a machine shop and welding instructor at an area high school, said his classes are full.

“Students here kind of get the message that’s it a good thing to do,” Jones said. “It’s (about) how seriously they take it.”

He estimated that about half of his students are serious about manufacturing or welding as possible careers.

Some are simply curious about the skills required to make and modify things.

In Jones’ view, much depends on helping parents and grandparents understand that manufacturing needs workers, and that with the right training, the field offers good careers.

Lukens cites National Association of Manufacturers data that says there are 600,000 open manufacturing jobs right now. Some of those openings seek engineers and scientists, but many are blue-collar positions: machinists, assemblers and the like.

“Manufacturing creates wealth,” Lukens said. “It’s one of the few things that does. And I don’t think a lot of people understand that.”