A national cross section of 2,502 adult Americans and owners or managers of 800 companies in the precision metalworking industry were surveyed to study public attitudes toward working in this industry and to explore recent recruiting and training practices in the precision metalworking field. The survey results indicated that Americans as a whole attached no stigma to industrial employment. Findings also suggested that the industry's best recruitment prospects continue to be from among those strata of society with incomes below $25,000 and with a high school education. To recruit students with college educations and/or from upper income households, the industry should appeal to America's esteem for specialized competence. Managers in precision metalworking, characterized as a recession-plagued industry, reported that they had cut employment of trainees, a cut that almost guarantees an inadequate supply of skilled employees when the economy recovers. These findings indicated a need for changes in industry and public policy to alleviate cyclical shortages of skilled labor and to ensure a growth of the skilled labor pool at a rate in line with the industry's long-term prospects. (The report contains 19 tables in the narrative section plus 43 appended supplemental tables with results of the surveys of both the public and the precision metalworking industry employers.) (YLB)