August 19, 2008, - 4:03 pm
Status v. Money: The Tough Job of Selling Blue Collar Jobs to Unemployed White Collar America
By Debbie Schlussel
As I noted recently, the value of a college degree is ever diminishing. Now, the welding industry is trying to plug a shortage in welders and iron workers to address a backlog in orders.
And welding now pays more than many jobs typically filled by a college grad.
But there’s a rub: How do you sell a higher-paying blue collar job to an America that now looks down on blue collar jobs and would rather take on large college loans and debts to get a degree and earn less?
It’s a problem that is associated with a country that produces less and less and consumes more and more. As I’ve noted before, America can’t survive as strictly a consumer nation. We must produce. If welder jobs aren’t filled, they’ll get filled by someone else who comes here or go somewhere else and take dollars away.
Snobbery–undue snobbery by empty-headed wannabe frat boys and sorority sisters–is killing America.
And I don’t think even the host of “Dirty Jobs”–Mike Rowe, who’s been recruited to sell blue collar jobs–can do the job.
The Wall Street Journal has the interesting details:
Even as the economy slumps and unemployment rises, strong demand for power plants, oil refineries and export goods has many manufacturers and construction contractors scrambling to find enough skilled workers to plug current and future holes.
With the shortage of welders, pipe fitters and other high-demand workers likely to get worse as more of them reach retirement age, unions, construction contractors and other businesses are trying to figure out how to attract more young people to those fields.
Their challenge: overcoming the perception that blue-collar trades offer less status, money and chance for advancement than white-collar jobs, and that college is the best investment for everyone. . . .
Companies and unions don’t dispute that college can be a wise investment, but they also say some unionized craft workers can earn more than the average college graduate, without the burden of student debt.
“You earn while you learn,” says Brian Couch, a young electrician, in a video posted on the Web sites YouTube and MySpace. “It’s not like going to college where you go to school for five to eight years and have to work a part-time job.”
That video and several others like it were developed by public-relations firm Pac/West Communications for Local 48 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the National Electrical Contractors Association in Portland, Ore.
The two groups have teamed up for the online campaign to encourage high-school graduates to consider an apprenticeship as an alternative to college. . . .
Dusty Henry, a 25-year-old electrician in Portland, Ore., who belongs to IBEW Local 48, says he earns $34 an hour working on renewable-energy projects while some of his friends who went to college are having a hard time finding jobs.
“I chose the path that I wanted to take…and learned as much as I could for that one thing,” Mr. Henry said. “You go to college to kind of figure out what you want to do, but if you don’t figure it out, you go out with debt and you still don’t know.” . . .
Skilled-labor shortages are likely to intensify in coming years as more workers retire and the economy picks up again. By 2012, FMI predicts, nationwide demand for electricians, masons and pipe fitters, if their numbers remain constant, will exceed supply by at least 5%. Regional and seasonal shortages are expected to be much steeper.
Between 1995 and 2005, the percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds in college rose to 39% to 35%. Manufacturers, contractors and unions don’t dispute that college can be a wise investment, but they also say that unionized craft workers can earn more than the average college graduate. . . .
Michael Arndt, training director for the 300,000-member United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the U.S. and Canada, says a journeyman in his union — someone who has graduated from an apprenticeship — could earn about $30 an hour, or $1,050 for a 35-hour workweek. By comparison, median weekly earnings for workers 25 and older with only a bachelor’s degree amounted to $999 in the second quarter of 2008, according to the Labor Department.
“To the extent that people are picking college, they’re turning down construction,” says Kenneth D. Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America, an Arlington, Va., trade group.
To encourage young people to think about a future in the building trades, Mr. Simonson’s group has put together kits for elementary-school students that show, among other things, how to build a bridge out of popsicle sticks.
America is going to have to change the way it pushes college to those who aren’t among the great minds. They’d be better off choosing a less intellectual path, like learning one of the skilled trades.
That’s not to say that skilled workers are dummies or that skilled work is for dummies. But the fact is that while most of America is now pushed toward college, that’s a mistake. We need a division of labor. Not everyone is going to be a writer or mathematician, and a country that pushes everyone toward that path or toward attaining an often worthless degree is an America that will sink.
Everyone wants status, but not everyone can get it. And when everyone goes the same route to attain it, that route loses its value.
I’m not saying the state/government should decide who does what. That’s statism and they do that in Europe and did it in the then-Soviet Union and other communist states. I’m saying we shouldn’t push and encourage everyone to go to college.
Clearly, the marketplace has decided that college is devalued when everyone does it. It’s now just a commodity that anyone can buy.
Time to encourage people to the skilled trades so we remain a producer nation.
Most of these college graduates are so mediocre that they shouldn’t really be looking down at anyone.
I think another thing that makes college attractive to them is that for four years, or, if working part-time, then part-time for a number of years, they can indulge their narcissism, take meaningless courses for the most part, party, indulge many of their whims, which is harder to do if you’re training to be a plumber and you either know the stuff or you don’t. Hard to miss plumbrs apprentice training because you were high last night. A lot of them just don’t want to work. They are lazy, and those college students in victim groups have, for the most part, succombed to victimology.
c f on August 19, 2008 at 4:42 pm