Suddenly More Appealing: Skilled Trades

Plenty of jobs, decent wages and less fear of AI

With abundant, well-paying jobs available across the U.S., and the soaring costs of a four-year college degree, more high school graduates are considering a path that not long ago was seen as less desirable: a “blue collar” career in the skilled trades.

Only 25 percent of Americans believe it is extremely important to have a college degree to find well-paying employment in the current economy, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center. Forty percent of respondents felt a degree was not important at all.  

Skillwork, a Nebraska-based agency that connects employers with skilled workers, estimates there are nearly 3 million unfilled trade jobs in the U.S., including some 500,000 in manufacturing. It cited a plumbing company in Seattle where many employees earn more than $100,000 annually and an electrician in Ithaca who makes $90 an hour, which translates to $172,000 a year.

Michele Santiago, a guidance counselor at Beacon High School for 20 years, said she’s seen an uptick in interest in the skilled trades from students and parents. “Ten percent of our 11th and 12th graders now attend the Dutchess BOCES Career and Technical Institute” in Poughkeepsie, she said.

BOCES stands for Board of Cooperative Educational Services, which offers vocational training for students in districts that contribute funding. It also provides training in fields such as graphic design, fashion design, and film and audio for students who may pursue four-year degrees.

Students in the 10th to 12th grades also can attend the annual Hudson Valley Construction Career Day, held in the spring. “It’s hands-on,” Santiago said. “Students speak to members of local unions about their trade, apprenticeship programs and benefits of being in a trade union.”

In Cold Spring, about 10 percent of the juniors and seniors at Haldane High School receive vocational training at the Putnam-Northern Westchester BOCES in Yorktown Heights, said Amanda Cotchen, a Haldane guidance counselor. “Students know that a trade is an option; we promote career readiness as opposed to just a college focus,” she said.

Tommy Andrews, 18, a recent Haldane graduate, is pursuing a trade by another route: the military. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve and will attend boot camp in December before training to become a construction electrician. “I’ll make up to $1,000 a week during the 22 weeks of boot camp and trade school,” Andrews said. “And I’ll receive a $20,000 bonus for signing up. I can’t wait to go.”

As part of a six-year commitment, he’ll work one weekend a month plus a two-week stint each summer. He hopes to land a full-time job through the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Although the Air Force and Army also offer training in skilled trades, the Navy was an easy choice for Andrews because his father and grandfather served. 

Stephen Lowery, director of career and technical education at Putnam-Northern Westchester BOCES, said college costs and rising student debt have changed the landscape over the past five years. Depending on the trade, BOCES grads can step out of high school into a job that pays as much as $70,000 a year.

Lowery also has seen a shift in parental attitudes. “Parents who have always pushed going to college now see they won’t have to pay that big tuition, and their kids are going to get a good job doing something they love,” he said.

Asked to pick the five trades offering job opportunities for BOCES grads, Lowery quickly named electrical; welding; heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC); carpentry; and landscaping-urban forestry.  

While the role of trade unions has declined in recent decades, he sees a resurgence there, as well, because unions realize workforces are aging and they need to recruit younger members. He pointed to the Sheet Metal Workers as one union that has been working closely with BOCES to fill its dwindling ranks. 

Nicholas Millas, the principal at Dutchess BOCES Career and Technical Institute, noted that the school added HVAC in 2022 and graduated its first class in 2023. It also added a second welding and fabrication class and a second electrical class that year, and all sessions began 2024-25 with wait lists.

Two-year community colleges are another less costly and less time-consuming option for high school grads. The tuition at State University of New York community colleges is $5,400 annually for New York residents, compared to $7,070 per year at SUNY universities. The average annual tuition at private universities in the U.S. is $42,000 and can exceed $60,000 at elite schools.

With a campus on Route 9 in Fishkill, Dutchess Community College (DCC) offers technical programs in fields such as air conditioning and refrigeration; aviation maintenance; architectural, construction and electrical technology; and manufacturing.  

Susan Rogers, the chief of staff and vice president for institutional effectiveness at DCC, said the programs are on the upswing. “Our airframe maintenance and airframe mechanic programs didn’t even exist 10 years ago,” she said. “Graduates of our aviation pilot program can make over $100,000 a year.”

The mechatronics lab at the Fishkill campus, which Rogers described as “the intersection of electrical, mechanical, robotics and automation,” opened last year because regional employers identified a need for educated technicians with manufacturing skills. 

The college hopes to expand its air conditioning and refrigeration option into a complete HVAC program next fall, an area Rogers said offers “so many job opportunities.”  

She also sees more women considering industrial jobs. One female student “went into manufacturing after completing our electrical technician program,” Rogers said. “She’s encouraging more women to do that. Manufacturing is changing; it used to be dirty, greasy work where you had to be able to lift 75 pounds. That’s not the way it is anymore.”

Angi, formerly Angie’s List, helps people find contractors for electrical plumbing, carpentry and other skilled trades. It asked 1,200 workers for its 2024 Skilled Trades Report what they’d tell high school students is the best thing about working in a trade. Thirty-one percent said job satisfaction; 27 percent noted the pay; 23 percent cited entrepreneurial opportunities; and 19 percent liked the flexible hours.

While many white-collar workers worry that artificial intelligence could make their job obsolete, skilled trade workers are much less concerned. “The trades primarily operate in the physical world, and no algorithm on the planet has yet figured out how to hang drywall,” the Angi report noted.