Economic, job, and education changes are luring more young people to skilled trades such as construction, electrical work, plumbing, and auto maintenance. In part one of our three-part series, we'll explore who’s opting in and why. WMRA’s Christine Kueter digs in.
[sound of construction saw, air guns and hammering]
Eighteen-year-old Landon Wiseman is only half-joking about what makes construction hard.
LANDON WISEMAN: Heights! Personally.
Wiseman lives in Craigsville and graduated from high school last year. He started off as a landscaper, but now helps his boss, Chance Dickerson, with multi-million dollar home builds, like this one in Charlottesville’s Woolen Mills neighborhood.
WISEMAN: I guess the hardest thing would be just running relations between different people who don’t know what the other person’s doing. It’s like a chess game but neither player knows what sides sometimes. You get to iron that out. Relationships and communication is key.
There’s magic in the trade, Wiseman says.
WISEMAN: It’s an amazing thing to see something where there was nothing. You build it up from the ground up, and it looks beautiful when you’re done. And that sense of accomplishment, you know, I know people who’ve been in the construction crew, who say, there’re houses they can go to and point at it and say, “We did that. We did this. We did that.” That’s pride in your work. And when you can take pride in your work like that, and you can see the progress go like that, that is very amazing. Very fulfilling.
A year ago, Dickerson promoted Wiseman to site support specialist and bumped up his pay. Strength matters, Dickerson says, but soft skills count, too.
CHANCE DICKERSON: The misconception is that construction requires more brawn and less brains, and, in my experience, it really requires both. Like, you actually have to be very smart and very hardworking to be worth hiring in this industry. So the opportunities are vast but you have to come in humbly. The guys who’re going to excel the fastest, and be the most successful, are the ones that come in not assuming that they already know how to do everything.
It’s no secret that jobs in the skilled trades—think HVAC, plumbing, electrical work, construction and welding—are hot, and pay well. There’s also evidence fewer students are college-bound. Virginia’s undergraduate student population declined 1.4% since last year, according to State Council of Higher Education estimates.
It’s also a tough market for college grads. Entry-level jobs that don’t require experience are more scarce. AI-powered hiring tools often screen out rookie candidates, and remote work has taken a bite out of informal mentoring for greener workers. New college degree earners still out-earn those with only a high school diploma, studies show, but the gap is narrowing. More than two-fifths of recent college graduates are “underemployed," according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York study.
In the meantime, it’s boom-time for jobs in the trades. More than 109,000 new construction jobs will be added this year, nationwide, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There’ll also be 73,000 new jobs for electricians, 48,000 new HVAC jobs, nearly 35,000 more plumbing jobs, and more than 41,000 new gigs for auto technicians.
[garage sounds echo and, in the foreground, the click of a turning wrench]
High school senior Chris Serrato has both hands under the hood of a graphite-colored Volvo.
CHRIS SERRATO: I’m just doing the 60K service, so, like, spark plugs, tire rotations, a transmission service, oil change, and then checking over the car to see what else it needs.
Serrato is five months into a two-year apprenticeship at Carter Myers Automotive in Charlottesville. Once he graduates next spring, he’s got an offer to stay.
SERRATO: Getting to fix something, yeah. It’s just satisfying to me. Yeah. The automotive tech industry is really good. If you work hard, you will get somewhere, and you will be making a lot of money. That’s how I feel like. And I really do like working on cars so I’m thinking about staying through this.
CMA community relations specialist Beth Lucchesi hires 20 to 30 auto apprentices like Serrato each year.
BETH LUCCHESI: As the trades are becoming more and more recognized, as a way not only to make a living, but to build a very high wage earning career with advancement and respect, that’s where the shift starts to happen. I have technicians making, easily, six figures, and 20 years ago, people thought, “gosh, they’re going to be changing oil for $20 an hour for their whole career,” and that’s just not the case.
The federal government wants more businesses to develop registered apprenticeship programs. It’s earmarked about $282 million over the last two years to support the effort.
