Where Have All the Trade Workers Gone?

Pierrette Swan never planned on becoming a welder. A straight-A student with an intellectual streak, Swan graduated from Virginia Wesleyan University in the midst of the 2008 financial crash and quickly discovered her fine art degree wasn’t worth much. Struggling to find work, she enrolled in a welding apprenticeship program at Newport News Shipbuilding on the advice of her sister. Though uncertain at first, she eventually realized she had found her vocation and rose to a managerial position.

“Welding exercises my brain in such a wonderful way because of how many things you have to juggle while you’re doing it to make it go right,” Swan told National Review. “It might take years to build a ship, but you can see the welds that you put down; you can see the material you fit up or that you grinded or that you prepared. And that is very rewarding.”

While Swan’s success is proof that trade careers can be fulfilling, too few young Americans are entering them. Across every industry, employers are facing an acute shortage of skilled trade workers, and the problem is becoming a crisis. In January alone, 31 percent of small-business owners had job openings that they were unable to fill, and many employers in construction and manufacturing cited labor quality as the primary issue. The problem will only deepen if left unaddressed. One grim analysis from this year found that nearly 1.4 million trade jobs across seven essential industries will be unfilled by 2030.

But how did America’s skilled workers disappear? Gradually, by all accounts. Since the turn of the century, labor force participation has steadily declined. The trend has been driven by factors such as falling fertility rates, increased restrictions on immigration, and the disruption caused first by the Great Recession and later by the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Brian Binke — the president of the Birmingham Group, a construction recruitment firm — the issue became “impossible to ignore” for trade professions in the “mid- to late 2010s.” As the number of tradesmen retiring from various industries increased, the number of young people entering those occupations failed to keep pace. Today, for every five tradesmen who leave the workforce, only two younger workers replace them. And the demand for skilled tradesmen is higher than ever.

Boyd Worsham is the president of the National Center for Construction Education and Research, which focuses on recruitment and workforce development in the construction industry. His organization has developed a range of opportunities for young people. Its High School Builder program, for instance, helps students earn credentials, while its Build Your Future program aims to inform parents about career paths in construction. Worsham told National Review that the construction industry faces a severe lack of young talent. In recent years, the growth of artificial intelligence has made the issue particularly apparent. “You don’t have to look much further than the current surge in data centers being built in America to understand the growing need,” he said. “Those new projects need more trained craft professionals.”

Worsham’s emphasis on education is sensible: Many of the experts who spoke to National Review said the most significant factor behind the recruitment issue is a lack of understanding of what trade careers actually entail. In popular culture, trades are commonly depicted as dirty, physically demanding, or outright dangerous. They are often perceived as less lucrative or prestigious than white collar careers. These stereotypes, however, are increasingly out of step with reality.

Binke, president of the Birmingham Group, has studied tradesmen’s salary data extensively. He told National Review that many skilled workers can earn “in excess of $200,000 per year on hourly wage and overtime alone,” in addition to generous travel and per diem allowances. According to his research, particularly high-paying occupations include pipeline welding, elevator construction in major metropolitan areas, and data center electrical work. Another benefit is that trade qualifications can be far less expensive to obtain than college degrees. While a typical four-year degree at a public university now costs more than $100,000, the average trade certificate program costs a maximum of $10,000. And it can be earned in as little as three months.

But in high schools across America, teachers and administrators remain exclusively focused on sending students to college. Mark Rowe, vice president of the Jim Rowe Foundation for the Trades — a nonprofit that helps students gain experience in skilled trades — has been concerned about this reality for decades. He has spent his life in the trades and is currently the president of J. Henry Mechanical Inc. — an HVAC maintenance contractor based in Manassas, Va. Over the years, he has found it increasingly difficult to attract young people to the industry. Most students, he believes, simply have no idea that careers in the trades exist.

Rowe said that vocational training wings in public schools “disappeared” in the late 20th century. The notion that college is the sole pathway to success filled the gap. “Because that’s been the only messaging for so long, a lot of parents and high school teachers and counselors are still stuck in that mindset,” he said. Changing the narrative around skilled trades is a complex task, but Rowe’s work in Northern Virginia could provide a template. The Jim Rowe Foundation has partnered with local school systems to raise awareness of trade careers, provide scholarships for students to pursue technical training, and create work-based learning programs. Though the foundation is still in its infancy, Rowe hopes that its reach can expand.

Lisa Wolf, a board member at the foundation, has helped implement these ideas in a local school division, Manassas Park City Schools. She’s been a teacher for more than two decades and currently oversees career and technical education. In her judgment, encouraging young Americans to consider the trades will require a “curricular and cultural” shift in K–12 education. Students must be exposed to a variety of professional pathways, and teachers must be willing to take them seriously. But “parents need to be educated on those options, too,” Wolf said. “Often, the value judgments are coming from the adults in the home, rather than in the schools.”

One way of reaching parents could be to show them the value and versatility of apprenticeship programs, which are commonly associated with manual trades such as carpentry, masonry, and plumbing. Now, however, a growing number of career fields that were once almost inaccessible without a college degree are adopting the apprenticeship model to train new workers. Wolf references IT, engineering, and health care as prominent examples. The shift has occurred, she said, because those industries are so in need of people that they “can’t wait four years to hire trained staff.”

But even if schools nationwide embrace vocational programs, it will take time for things to change. Most of the experts who spoke to National Review said that greater support from the government will be necessary to expand access to the trades and help new initiatives in schools reach their full potential. Policy measures, such as tax incentives for employers to offer training programs, could play a role. Rowe also believes that “better messaging” is vital. He’d like to see state governments do more to promote alternatives to college and extend grants or scholarships that are restricted to college degrees to trade school or apprenticeship programs.

Still, there are some encouraging signs that young people may be turning toward the trades. According to data from the National Student Clearinghouse, enrollment in vocational and trade programs at community colleges has grown by almost 20 percent since 2020. Other studies indicate that apprenticeships are gaining popularity. Swan, the welder in Virginia, is currently a welding instructor at New Horizons Regional Education Centers, which offers specialized and technical education in the state. In her experience, there is no shortage of interest in the trades among young people. Each year, she receives roughly 150 applications for 20 open spots in her program. The larger problem is that her students are increasingly struggling to find employment after graduation.

“There are companies that need welders, but they want them to already have five years' experience, so they’re just stealing welders from each other,” Swan said. “Companies need to budget for training, and not all of them can.” Greater support from public policy could ease this burden, but ultimately, the combined efforts of educators, politicians, and industry leaders will be necessary to reverse the skilled worker shortage. “It takes a village,” Swan said.