Intense demand for workers in the skilled trades is leading U.S. companies to ramp up training programs to expand their workforces and to poach workers from other companies to fill vitally needed positions.
Mike Rowe, CEO of the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which helps the next generation get training in the skilled trades, told FOX Business that it’s “been very surreal for me to watch the skilled trades come back into something like favor.”
“I don’t want to overstate it, but I can tell you that not a week goes by that I don’t hear from the CEO of some consequential company or some industry leader who is straight up freaking out over the barriers to recruiting,” Rowe said, adding that many large U.S. companies are establishing their own training programs to attract workers to the skilled trades.
“A lot of companies are doing things to grease the skids to accelerate the whole learning process,” Rowe said. “Everybody is hiring, and nobody is quite sure how to come at it because they’re all competing with each other for the same worker.”
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Rowe said that a wide range of companies are seeking skilled workers, from tech companies building data centers and power plants amid the AI boom to defense contractors, home improvement firms, automakers, construction firms and more.
“The government’s got a ton of skin in the game at this point, but so too does Ford and General Motors and every major Fortune 500 company. It’s almost like a kind of singularity is happening around this issue — micro and macro,” he said.
“To me, the most compelling stat is five-in-two: every year, when five tradesmen leave the workforce, two replace them. It’s been that way for 12 years, so the math has caught up to us,” Rowe added.
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Rowe spoke with FOX Business after he visited DECKED’s facility in Defiance, Ohio, where the company makes sliding drawer systems for pickup trucks. He added that the company is one of many that are hiring workers in the skilled trades.
DECKED shared an economic analysis comparing skilled trades workers, including electricians, HVAC technicians and plumbers, to bachelor’s degree holders who don’t have an advanced degree that found the trades offer a faster path to financial breakeven with less debt.
It found that trade trainees can break even in less than a year by starting to earn right after high school or after half a year to two years in trade school, given median entry-level wages. By contrast, a college graduate at the median starting salary who didn’t work during school would break even in about three and two-thirds years.
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Rowe said that in talking to past recipients of scholarships from the mikeroweWORKS Foundation who’ve begun their careers in the skilled trades, “it’s shocking how many welders who began three years ago are now in the mid-six figures.”
“It’s not shocking to me, but I see parents continually shocked. I see academics and the intelligentsia and reporters continually shocked when they see a 25-year-old who’s prospering as a result of mastering a trade,” he said, adding that he didn’t want to “paint with too broad a brush” because the compensation varies based on the circumstances at play.
“It really is dependent on the individual, sometimes on the company, but certainly on geography too. But in general, there is a complete disconnect between the idea you can make six figures with a skilled trade among many, many people, and debunking that is an important part of level-setting the whole conversation,” Rowe added.
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“What I am hearing from the 3,600 people that we’ve assisted through mikeroweWORKS, that might be anecdotal, but that’s way more compelling for me because these are people who got into the trades four or five years ago, and they’re calling their shots right now,” Rowe said. “They’re deciding where they want to live. They’re deciding how many hours they want to work a week or a month.”
The intense demand for skilled workers has led companies to poach trade workers from rivals, which Rowe said may not necessarily be good for the country writ large – but can lead to a boost in earnings for those willing to move to pursue new opportunities.
“I was just in Plano and got a tour of a data center there. Met three electricians, all under 30, all making over $240,000 a year, all poached three times in the preceding 18 months from other projects,” Rowe said.
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“Again, that’s not representative of all of it, but I never heard those stories 10, 12 years ago when we were just getting started with the scholarship program. I hear them now every single day,” he added. “Big changes are happening right in front of us.”
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