After being pushed for years toward college degrees promising overwhelming debt and so-so job prospects, America’s young people are heading to trade schools in ever-greater numbers. You know Your Survival Guy has been watching this trend, and the efforts by Mike Rowe Works to get students into trade school jobs. At Real Clear Markets, Tom Wilson discusses the change in attitude toward trade schools among Gen Z, writing:
Generation Z appears to be getting the message, and in larger numbers than many people realize. Trade school enrollment has climbed steadily in recent years. Apprenticeship applications have increased. On social media — the place where generational attitudes actually form — electricians, welders, and HVAC technicians documenting their work and their paychecks have built large followings. Young people are watching peers earn real wages, develop tangible skills, and own their own businesses before their college-educated counterparts have finished paying off their loans. The romantic notion of a four-year degree as the universal ticket to a good life is losing its grip, and the trades are direct beneficiaries.
Still, it’s worth being honest about the damage done. The workers who would have entered the trades twenty years ago didn’t disappear — they were steered elsewhere, often into degree programs that left them underemployed and indebted. That’s a real cost, paid by real people, and it doesn’t get undone quickly. Rebuilding a skilled workforce takes years of training and experience that can’t be manufactured overnight.
America didn’t lose its tradesmen by accident. It lost them through sustained cultural and institutional pressure that treated an entire category of valuable work as a consolation prize. The market is finally delivering the correction — but it would have been a lot cheaper to get the message right the first time.
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