‘A very leaky pipeline’: 1.7 million trade jobs will open each year through 2035—and experts are scrambling to figure out how to fill them
Source: Fortune ·
A new report finds a greying workforce and Gen Z retention problems are making it harder to fill ever-expanding skilled trade roles.
From the source
Mike Rowe, the host of TV show Dirty Jobs, recently offered a sobering diagnosis of the state of skilled trades jobs today: “For every five tradespeople who retire this year, two replace them.” “Five out, two in,” Rowe said during a Ford Pro Accelerate panel on workforce development. “I don’t care how you vote. I don’t care what your politics are. Math doesn’t care either.” “How long do you want to wait for your toilet to get fixed?” he added. “How long do you want to wait for the lights to come back on when you flip the switch?” Now economists are putting a number to just how big this shortage is—and what exactly it takes to fill it. The recent State of America’s Skilled Trades report, published by nonprofits Jobs for the Future and The Burning Glass Institute, found there will be 1.7 million skilled trade job openings every year through 2035, including 600,000 new net positions added in through the same time period. The surge bucks the trend of slugging job growth and unemployment,…