Mike Rowe: Trade schools are booming this year 🔥
“For 16 years, we’ve been offering work ethic scholarships to trade schools.”
“As of this morning, we have 10 times the number of applicants that we did a year ago.”
“Gen Z and their parents are saying: $150,000, $200,000 in the hole for the next 10 years for my kid to get trained for a job that doesn’t exist anymore, on money they’re never going to be able to pay back, that’s a tough sell.”
“That’s the good news.”
“The bad news is that the need has never been higher.”
“Five [tradesmen] retire, two come in. It’s been that way for 12 years now. Five out, two in.”
“You have an unprecedented need for welders and electricians and steam fitters and pipe fitters.”
“The people who make our submarines, BlueForge Alliance and the associated maritime industrial base, they called me three weeks ago. They’re looking to hire 140,000 people.”
“The automotive industry, 80,000 openings, both in technicians and collision repair.”
“Don’t even get me started on energy. Hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
“These data centers and the race for AI, this is being talked about today like it’s the modern day Manhattan Project … and the pinch point is a paucity of skilled labor.”
“And Harvard and a lot of elite universities have just stumbled over themselves.”