More young workers are going into trades as disenchantment with the college track continues, and rising pay and new technologies shine up plumbing and electrical jobs
America needs more plumbers, and Gen Z is answering the call.
Long beset by a labor crunch, the skilled trades are newly appealing to the youngest cohort of American workers, many of whom are choosing to leave the college path. Rising pay and new technologies in fields from welding to machine tooling are giving trade professions a face-lift, helping them shed the image of being dirty, low-end work. Growing skepticism about the return on a college education, the cost of which has soared in recent decades, is adding to their shine.
Enrollment in vocational training programs is surging as overall enrollment in community colleges and four-year institutions has fallen. The number of students enrolled in vocational-focused community colleges rose 16% last year to its highest level since the National Student Clearinghouse began tracking such data in 2018. The ranks of students studying construction trades rose 23% during that time, while those in programs covering HVAC and vehicle maintenance and repair increased 7%.
“It’s a really smart route for kids who want to find something and aren’t gung ho on going to college,” says Tanner Burgess, 20, who graduated from a nine-month welding program last fall.
I think it’s great that kids are finding ways to avoid debt traps but I worry when colleges become places only accessible to rich people. One of the best indicators for supporting Trump was lack of a college degree. I worry that the inability to be able to be educated just to become educated will lead to populations easier to seduce into facism
Exactly! In a more technology driven world full of false narratives and lies we need MORE ppl in college. Trade jobs shouldn’t be considered lesser work but we should be more alarmed higher education is become unattainable for middle to lower class folks. Especially when k-12 schools are getting picked a part in general due to funding, burned out teachers, and bullshit “anti-woke” laws
MORE PPL IN TRADES ISNT A SOLUTION. ITS THE RICH FUCKING FUTURE GENERATIONS OUT OF HIGHER EDUCATION
More people in trades isn’t a solution, it’s a critical need. It was getting to the point there for a while where you couldn’t find a qualified tradesperson to do HVAC/Plumbing/Electrical work who didn’t have a 6 month backlog for love or money, and there were more specialized trades which very quietly were in danger of not having enough people to apprentice up the next generation. There’s a correction there that needed to happen, and it’s a good thing for everyone that it did.
We absolutely need more people with trade education, but we also need more people with well rounded liberal arts educations who are able to understand and interpret things like literature, history, statistics, and philosophical/logical arguments, people who are able to engage with sets of information outside of their professional expertise and separate cogent arguments from bullshit. Both of these things are essential to having a society of truly free citizens, but only the former has a tangible economic consequence under our system that will kick in with a clear enough cause and effect relationship to prompt policy changes like this. Without the latter we’ll end up with a dumber and dumber society than can’t talk to each other and ends up wasting all their energy yelling at each other on social media instead of organizing effectively for the world we deserve.
The solution to this is to bring back paid apprenticeships, like what existed up until the early 1980s.
where you couldn’t find a qualified tradesperson to do HVAC/Plumbing/Electrical work
Hire an apprentice. No excuses. Tired of whining from people how they can’t find help. Been training interns for years. Give me anyone willing to work and follow instructions and I will find a use for them. Even if it is just fetching tools or holding a flashlight.
I mean, I agree, but i’m on the consumer side of that interaction. And I’m a huge advocate for hiring interns and training people up from there, but the MBAs get stroppy about that.
True that. They want freaken unicorns. Someone with all this knowledge and experience willing to work for near free.
University attendance at these levels are also part of the Baby Boom. Prior to that, most people got by with a high school diploma. Bachelors were for the wealthy, a Masters put you at the highest levels of professionals, and a doctorate was something you did towards the end of your career in order to record all of the information and experience you gathered during your career. Now, some entry level positions REQUIRE a doctorate and the average person with a Bachelors earns what someone with a high school diploma earned in the 1970s.
The university was never intended to serve the masses.
You are confusing origins with utility. Fraternities are believed to have been started as a way to keep students from too much partying and drinking, that has no relationship whatsoever with what they are now for example.
Just because higher education wasn’t useful to most people in the freaken 1700s says nothing about today. If you want to decrease the wealth gap the best means is higher taxes and banning share buybacks not making everyone less educated in faith that the free market will correct.
One thing that rarely gets mentioned is these jobs are still old boys clubs. If you’re anything other than a traditionally presenting male, you’re going to have a hard time.
Perhaps the pendulum will move the other way as the old guard ages out and Gen Z fills the vacancies.
There is an old German (?) quote:
“Progress one funeral at a time.”
It’s a bit dark but there is some truth to it.
Dear christ in heaven I hope so. Millennial here, in a liberal city, and throughout my whole career my coworkers have probably averaged 98% male. Too. Much. Goddamn. Testosterone. Also I don’t care about trucks or football, so I’m bored out of my fucking mind with all the chit chat.
Meanwhile when I deal with construction in South East Asia I see freaken small armies of short thin women toiling away.
Exactly. People will happily share all of their racist and misogynistic thought while at the same time constantly complaining about why Biden or your democratic governor is the cause of all the world’s evils.
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Well, we are no longer telling our children that if they don’t go to college they will never be anything. That message was drilled into my skull at an early age. I went to college and have a professional job. I think I would’ve been much happier being an electrician
Plumbers make more than software engineers in my area.
Probably because they are more in demand than software engineers.
I wonder if all of these young people going into these trades will lower the wages.
This kind of thing is cyclical. When the trades get an excess of workers and wages are driven down, the narrative will switch back to “you must get a college degree” just like how it was decades ago.
I remember this with nursing degrees when I was in college in the late 2000s, there was a big deal made about a shortage of nurses around that time, and a bunch of kids were convinced they were going to make bank and have guaranteed jobs when they graduated, then they started graduating and flooded the market. A bunch of them ended up staying in school for grad degrees in other fields, since they couldn’t find nursing jobs.
These trades are the backbone of society and we should absolutely encourage this. Plus, many of these trades have well-established unions.
Can confirm, not going into higher education and getting an apprenticeship was the bar none best decision that I EVER made.
All my friends who took the college/university path are trapped under crushing debt and struggling to find jobs that pay anything, let alone pay decently. College isn’t the be-all and end-all it used to be.
what industry did you go into?
Aerospace manufacturing; the apprenticeship paid for me to do exactly the courses and qualifications that I’d need for the manufacturing (instead of me having to pay to do those things) and had a guaranteed job at the end so long as I passed said courses. Way easier than a full college or university degree and I was making money the whole way through.
oh that’s dope. I’m curious, what do you do? I feel like manufacturing is always portrayed as like assembly line for cheap products, what’s it really like?
Not OP but I work in a similar environment (special heavy rail equipment). In our shop we have lots of tradesman: plumbers, mechanics, welders, electricians, etc.
Generally they are broken up into small teams, handed a set of prints, a kit of parts, and told to build the thing to the print. It’s not like an assembly line where you’re tightening one bolt all day, it’s more like building different Erector sets all day and handing them off to the next team.
Low stakes, high pay, good benefits, regular hours, low monotony. If higher Ed is not for you, I’d look into something like this.
yeah definetly an option I’m looking into. still gonna go to college for automotive, as my local community college has a great program and is really cheap (7-8k/ year for two years), but I can always change my mind later
Oh man, that sorta work would’ve been a dream for high school me; made it into IT now but damn, not going 3 years in retail/food would’ve been nice
Generally 3 types exist in the US.
Chemical, high end products, and marginal products (things worth so little per unit weight it isn’t worth outsourcing)
The marginal have more of the traditional assembly line ones. You do not want to work there. The high end chances are you are getting a cell and parts come in, parts come out. That isn’t bad work.
giving trade professions a face-lift, helping them shed the image of being dirty, low-end work.
Lmao WSJ appealing to the petite bourgeoisie.
Different Gen different country but we got done real dirty from the abandonment of apprenticeships, University was the only thing pushed. Hopefully we’re looking at getting back to what our parents had in regards to choices after school
Union jobs
Here in the UK we have a shortage of builders electricans plumbers etc, mainly because my millennial generation couldn’t get trained, there was a focus on only taking on experienced people, with apprenticeships seen as old fashioned, so very few offered them. In fact apprenticeships have only come back in the last 15 years or so in a big way because the government subsidises them. The thing I remember vividly were a few newspaper articles talking how lazy my generation were, when we were literally cut off from decent employment opportunities.
“Choosing” to leave the college path
lololololololol
Great, trade professions are the jobs of the future! AI can’t replace plumbers and electricians… Or at least I wouldn’t trust their work
