A shortage of skilled tradespeople
My required electrical engineering course was taught by a Ph.D. so spacey it was like taking a class from The Nutty Professor. I got an ‘A’ and laughed out loud over it for spitting back on the tests information I never really understood. It’s said one can graduate with a degree in electrical engineering and not know how to wire an electrical outlet. Believe it.
The problem with moving to electric vehicles and away from fossil fuels for heating and power is that the country will need a lot more electricians able to wire up all that gear. David Owen at The New Yorker reports there is a shortage of them, but also “heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) techs.” Owen explains:
One reason for the skilled-labor gap is that the work is real work. The electricians who restored power to the houses on our road spent Christmas Eve in bucket trucks, buffeted by winds so strong they made the screens on our porch hum like kazoos. LeMieux told me that he’s had apprentices who quit after a few months because they had decided the job was too wet, too messy, too cold, too dirty, too hot. A more significant factor may be that, for decades, employers, educators, politicians, and parents have argued that the only sure ticket to the good life in America is a college degree. People who graduate from college do earn more, on average, than people who don’t, but the statistics can be misleading. Many young people who start don’t finish, yet still take on tens of thousands in education loans—and those who do graduate often discover that the economic advantage of holding a degree can be negated, for years, by the cost of having acquired it.
The federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act pays for more infrastructure but not enough for workforce development. So, Owen celebrates the Connecticut Technical Education and Career System (CTECS) and its network of trade schools he feels might be a national model for how to address that need.
A college degree may pay better, but the cost (debt) means it not catch up in total earnings to trades work for a couple of decades.
Leah Stokes, the U.C. Santa Barbara professor, told me, “For a long time, we have valorized white-collar jobs and tech workers and the knowledge economy. We need a whole new group of people to think about going into the trades, including people whose families have had white-collar jobs.” One of my golf buddies is a pilot for American Airlines. He and his wife have a daughter who’s about to start graduate school, a daughter who’s about to start college, and a son, Sam, who, in addition to having a decent golf swing, is an apprentice at a local HVAC company. Sam is twenty. He knew when he was in eighth grade that he didn’t want to go to college. He attended his town’s regular public high school, and, after graduation, went to work. He takes night classes at Henry Abbott Tech, another school in the CTECS system, accumulating theory credits toward his journeyperson’s license. He told me that his sister’s bachelor’s degree had cost his parents about two hundred thousand dollars, while the twenty credits he needs for his license will end up costing more like five thousand. (CTECS night-school students pay tuition.) Meanwhile, he’s installing heat pumps and getting paid.
The father of my best friend in high school was an auto mechanic. He was simple, humble man who’d served in WWII as an aircraft mechanic. His proudest moment was the time he worked on Gen. Eisenhower’s plane. I never forgot that. He didn’t.
Those skilled trades pay well but are socially undervalued compared to college degrees. That’s a shame. It could bite us as we attempt a transition to a green economy.