While we were busy telling the last couple generations that their options were to either a) serve fries for their rest of their lives or b) go to college and incur massive student loan debt, the skilled trades took a huge hit 👷💥
Here’s Five Fast Facts on why no one between “played with tamagotchi” and “does daily TikTok challenges” cares to learn a skilled trade:
- 🤷🥱 Why care? The skilled labor shortage is one of the biggest problems facing our nation. The construction industry alone has 650,000 open jobs… and most of those folks are baby boomers who are about to retire.
- 😒👎 Trades are Great… But No Thanks: Despite the majority of high schoolers and their parents agreeing that a career in trades is a positive, only 16% of youth said they'd consider it.
- 🔧🤝 It's Who You Know: Many young people aren't exposed to people who work in trades. Only 42% said they've had a conversation with a skilled worker. Even less (29%) felt they even knew what to do if they wanted to look into starting a trade career.
- 👨👷♂️ Men At Work: Skilled labor continues to be a male-dominated industry, and it's a continuing trend as 53% of boys were familiar with trade careers, while only 36% of girls were. That rules out a big part of the population considering the trades.
- 💰🚢 How to Turn This (Apprentice)Ship Around: Many big organizations are committed to closing the trade skills gap. Some are even pledging $25 million over the next five years to fund training and reskilling initiatives (Watch out for those plumbers that discuss Plato… they were probably a philosophy majors) while others are looking to make trade jobs sound super coolio to the young people across the country.
🔥 Bottom line: The economy NEEDS skilled labor.Young people need more education on trade careers and understand that they can be just as lucrative (if not more so, and sans student loan debt) as white collar gigs.
Have you been impacted by the skilled labor shortage? Let us know by connecting with us on Social Media and be sure to share this newsletter with any friends & coworkers!
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