Why More Gen Z Workers Are Pursuing Skilled Trade Jobs
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Here's your money briefing for Friday, April 5th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. There's a labor shortage in the skills trade sector. Think plumbers, welders, and construction workers. And filling that gap are Americans ages 18 to 27, also known as Gen Z. We have seen rising wages in a number of the skilled trades.
We're also seeing rising disenchantment with the four-year college path, both with the expense associated with getting a degree like that, and also with some doubts about prospects for graduates.
We'll talk to Wall Street Journal reporter Teping Chen after the break.
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More Gen Z workers are taking skilled trade jobs instead of going to college. Wall Street Journal reporter Teping Chen joins me. Teping, when we say skilled trades, what types of jobs are we talking about?
We're talking about jobs that have a skill involved, often maybe requiring a license or some kind of certification. That can range from anything from an electrician to a plumber to a welder.
What's drawing Gen Z to these jobs?
There's a lot going on here. There was a study recently that found roughly half of college graduates actually end up in jobs where bachelor degrees aren't needed.
Why are Gen Z workers attractive to people hiring in this area?
Well, they're badly needed.
What labor shortages in skilled trades are introduced at the start of the episode?
There's long mental labor shortage and continues to be a shortage of workers in the skilled trades. And you think about a lot of what is happening in the country, a lot of infrastructure projects, not to mention the rising tide of retirements of boomers in these industries. And so there's definitely a lot of appetite for Gen Z workers, too.
To some, trade jobs have a stigma of dirty or low-end work. How is the profession trying to shake that image?
Some of it is a shift that is just coming with time and technology. When I spoke with high school counselors across the country, a number of them said that historically Students have thought of these professions as maybe being for students who weren't that great at academics or were getting into trouble. But more recently, a lot of these technologies have come on board that have changed the image of the trades there have been. in classrooms across the country, more vocational tech programs incorporating things like robotic arms or new kinds of machines that actually allow students to create their own tools, custom design different programs to make their own kinds of tools. I spoke to one worker who was struck to find that in a construction job, she ended up
quite quickly being trained to use a robot that assists with site layout. And so there's really a gamut of technologies. But just the fact that they are starting to transform a lot more of the kind of day-to-day work of some of these professions has made an appreciable difference in how some of these trades are perceived. How does someone get started who wants to find a trades job? There are a lot of different paths. You can go the traditional route of going to trade school. There's community colleges. There's private programs that are available. There are also a lot of companies and employers that, given the shortage of workers, are really happy to take folk who don't have experience and train you up.
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