Willette 1

/Josh Willette

Rebecca Goossens

Senior Seminar

13 February 2018

Shortage of tradesmen

There is a decreasing number of people in the trades, and it is a big problem for the US

economy. There are too many tradesmen leaving their jobs and not enough coming to take their

place. There has to be something done in order to be able to keep making new buildings. In order

to increase the number of students looking for a career in the trades, high schools need to

increase the classes that teach about trades.

The number of people in the trades is very low. Sixty-two percent of firms struggled to

fill their skilled trade’s positions (What Happens When the Boomers Retire). When working as

an electrician in a busy time of the year, one will work 60 hours a week as an apprentice, and

some of the journeymen work closer to 80 hours a week (Gwin). Therefore, Electricians and

plumbers are always looking for help and will hire anyone as long as they will work. In 2010 to

2012, jobs for skilled tradesmen have expanded 6.2 percent (Wright). In fact, electricians are

sometimes forced to hire people right out of high school who do even not attend secondary

school. Unfortunately, electricians have trouble hiring more apprentices even though they need

the help because they can only have two apprentices for each journeyman (Gwin).

This job shortage creates many issues. The main issue is that people are having to wait

longer and longer for a tradesman to come and fix a problem like a hole in a pipe or a light

switch not working (Reed).There are not enough workers in the trades for the amount of work

that people need them to do.

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There are many reasons why there are not enough people in the trades or going into them.

A big reason why there are an incredibly low amount of journeymen is that in the late ‘80s, and

again in 2008, there was a the financial crisis where no one was building, and companies did not

have enough work coming in to pay everyone (Abdol R. Chini). Companies were forced to lay

off many workers until the economy got back up. While waiting for the economy to pick up, the

workers got new jobs, and when people wanted to start building again, there were not enough

tradespeople to build. The U.S. is still trying to recover from the loss of the labor force (Abdol R.

Chini).

Another reason there are not enough people entering the trades is all the pressure from

teachers and parents to go to a four year college (Krupnick). Parents and teachers put all this

pressure on students to get a four-year degree if they want to live in their own home someday.

Students have to believe it because that is all they have been told. There are a lot of assumptions

about construction trades that are not true. People think of the trades as “low paying, manual,

thankless, outdoor work rampant with drug and alcohol abuse” (Abdol R. Chini). A construction

worker is seen as a ditch digger, sweaty, dirty and mean. (Abdol R. Chini) These assumptions led

to people not wanting to become a tradesman because they do not want to be thought of as that.

In addition, the classes that help students find out if they will like trades job have been cut from

many school’s curriculums. Camron Gwin, an electrician apprentice, works with many people

who said they became electricians because they liked those classes in high school. At Triton

High School they do not have many shop classes that teach about the trades, and even if the

classes are offered, they may end up not returning.

The shortage also exists due to retirements. There are many people who have been in the

trades for their life, that are getting close to retirement age, and there are not enough workers
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coming to take their place. The amount of Baby Boomers in the trades is incredible with about

40% of all Baby Boomer workers in the trades (What Happens When the Boomers Retire).

Unlike many typical jobs, trades are physically demanding, so workers have a hard time pushing

back retirement. In fact, only 1.9 to 4.8 percent of tradesmen are 65 and older, and over half of

tradesmen in 2012 were over 45 (Krupnick). Therefore, the little amount of people to train in the

next generation of tradesmen is getting smaller and smaller The problem is so bad in California

that they are spending $6 million on a campaign to influence more people to enter the trades

(Krupnick). All of these causes add up to make this problem huge, and it will continue to cause

big problems if a solution cannot be found.

One big problem is that businesses and families are having trouble finding companies

that have the time to build new offices or homes. If there are not enough tradespeople to build

new buildings and homes, people will be stuck in old, run-down homes, and offices will look

dirty. If someone is having trouble with a leak with their plumbing or a problem with a switch,

households will be waiting longer and longer to have those problems fixed (Reed).

If people have to wait long enough, they will eventually break down and decide to do it

themselves. If everyone is building themselves, there is a more likely chance that there could be

a problem. There is a reason tradesmen are paid more than many people think they should be:

They need to know the best way to do everything in their fields. They have to make sure what

they are building is built how it should be to prevent damage in the future such as a fire from

faulty wiring or water damage from a leaking pipe.

In addition to building, many tradesmen like electricians are hired as maintenance men

for factories (Gwin). If the factories do not have people licensed to keep everything up and

running, they will have a hard time staying up and running, since there are a lot of government
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regulations to be followed that not just anyone can fix. For examples a lot of companies need

electricians to come in just to change light bulbs (Gwin). Government regulations have also

affected the number of tradesmen needed. Safety is a huge concern in modern-day, industrial

America, and the industrial factories need to be able to hire tradesmen to keep them running.

Consumers need a lot of the products that factories produce, and if there are not enough

tradesmen, this could create more monopolies and make everything more expensive. Money is

always a big thing, and with fewer and fewer tradesmen being available, people will have to pay

more to get something built because of the trades becoming more and more monopolized. If

someone offers a worker more money to get the job done first, the worker is obviously going to

do it for more money. This will result in trades companies having to start charging more to keep

the business afloat.

The problem of the lack of people entering the trades is one that must be fixed, and there

are many solutions that will help solve this problem. The first thing companies need to do is keep

the workers they have. Secondary, schools need to start encouraging students to get into the

trades and start having more apprenticeship programs. The biggest thing is classes in high school

that teach about the trades. If the country starts making these changes, this will increase the

number of people entering the trades.

In order to increase the number of people in the trades, trade companies need to keep the

workers they have now. They need to give them raises and bonuses if they are doing a good job.

The workers also have to have somewhere to go; they need to be able to get promotions.

Companies need to make sure if the workers who are working extra hours get paid, like the

standard time and a half pay for any hours over 40. Companies also cannot take on too much
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work that their workers are forced to work a lot of overtime. The owner has to make sure the

workers are getting along at all levels of their company.

For a lot of graduating students, college is not an option due to personal problems or

money issues. In order to push more graduating students toward the trades, the United States

needs to start up new apprenticeship programs to get more people entering trades. Right now,

there are a couple apprenticeship programs for electricians, but there should be more programs

for other trades like plumbing and carpentry.

Fixing the trade problem will have to start in high school. Right now across America

shop classes are becoming extinct. In California, they were expecting all of the shop classes K-

12 to be gone by 2013 in the Los Angles school district. (Brown) The rest of the country is

following either because schools cannot find a teacher to teach the classes, or the subjects are

seen as cut able. In order to combat the problem with the lack of tradesmen, the United States

needs shop classes. Earlier in this paper, it mentions how a lot of electricians decide to become

electricians because of the classes they took in high school. High school classes is how a lot of

students narrow down what they want to be for the rest of their life. If they choose classes in high

school that they are good at and enjoy doing, they may choose to pursue these areas as a career.

There are no way students can figure out they like doing something if they never get the chance

to try it, and high school is the best place to make this happen.

There are a lot of benefits to working in the trades. Having a job in the trades might

sound bad to some people that do not want to do manual labor. However, there are many upsides

to the trades. There are trades jobs all over the country in need of more workers, so people can

move wherever and be able to get a job. The lowest 10 percent of trades all are making $13.14

an hour, which is not bad for starting out (Wright). On average, all trades pay $55,000 per year
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depending on the job and the level Such as apprentice, journeymen, and master (Krupnick). All

these trade jobs only require an associate’s degree at most, and there are also apprenticeship

programs that allow students to work part of the week and go to class for part of the Week. This

allows students to make money while they are learning. There are many good things about

working in the trades, and is a very good field of work to get into.

The shortage of tradesmen is a huge problem for the United States, as way too many

tradesmen are retiring and not enough students are coming to take their place. Something needs

to be done to encourage students to enter the trades. The best solution to this problem is to target

students in high school. High school is a very important part to everyone’s life and making sure

that every student learns what they need to, including what they want to do for the rest of their

life is key. Therefore, adding high school classes that teach about the trades and what tradesmen

do will greatly increase the number of students entering the trades.

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Works Cited

Abdol R. Chini, Brisbane H. Brown and Eric G. Drummond. Causes of the Construction Skilled Labor

Shortage and Proposed Solutions. Ed. Tulio Sulbaran. Gainesville: Tulio Sulbaran, 2003.

22 Febuary 2018. <http://ascpro0.ascweb.org/archives/1999/chini99.htm>.

Brown, Tara Tiger. Forbes. 30 May 2012. Artical. 1 March 2018.

<https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarabrown/2012/05/30/the-death-of-shop-class-and-

americas-high-skilled-workforce/#6a43f9c2541f>.

Gwin, Camron. Interview. Josh Willette. Owatonna , Febuary 2018.

Krupnick, Matt. PBS News Hour. 29 August 2017. Article. 16 Febuary 2018.

<https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/decades-pushing-bachelors-degrees-u-s-

needs-tradespeople>.

Reed, Robert. Business. 22 August 2017. Column. 16 Febuary 2018.

<http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ct-trades-jobs-shortage-robert-

reed-0822-biz-20170821-column.html>.

Skilled trades in demand. 14 November 2017. Infographic. 16 Febuary 2018.

<https://www.adeccousa.com/employers/resources/skilled-trades-in-demand/>.

Wright, Joshua. Forbes. 7 March 2013. Articles. 26 February 2018.

<https://www.forbes.com/sites/emsi/2013/03/07/americas-skilled-trades-dilemma-

shortages-loom-as-most-in-demand-group-of-workers-ages/#61a7dfed6397>.
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