Dirty Jobs<\/em> has made variations of that argument for years. But at Ford\u2019s gathering, Rowe\u2019s warning about welders, electricians, and other skilled workers became the opening to a more expansive conversation with Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Michael Duffy, Under Secretary for Acquisition and Sustainment, US. Department of War, about what the country gets wrong when it treats college and career training as opposing paths.<\/p>\nThe emerging argument was not merely that Americans need more people in the trades. It was that the language of \u201cblue collar\u201d and \u201cwhite collar\u201d may no longer describe the jobs employers need filled\u2014or the education workers need to navigate them. Try \u201cpurple,\u201d Rowe said.<\/p>\n
The arithmetic of a shrinking workforce<\/h2>\n
Rowe argued the skilled-labor shortage has become difficult to dismiss as a routine hiring challenge. The shortage, he said, is \u201creal,\u201d \u201cwide,\u201d \u201cgetting wider,\u201d and \u201cdangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is partly a question of demographics. More experienced tradespeople are retiring, while fewer young workers are entering fields such as welding, electrical work, plumbing, advanced manufacturing, and industrial maintenance.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow long do you want to wait for your toilet to get fixed?\u201d he said. \u201cHow long do you want to wait for the lights to come back on when you flip the switch?\u201d<\/p>\n
The gap also increasingly reaches into manufacturing and national defense. Rowe cited the submarine-industrial base as an illustration of the problem, describing shortages of welders and electricians at a time when the United States is trying to expand production capacity. <\/p>\n
Rowe said he got a call in his capacity as CEO of the mikeroweWORKS Foundation from the BlueForge Alliance, which oversees 16,000 individual companies collectively charged with delivering nuclear-powered submarines. \u201cThese guys call me to say, \u2018Hey, we\u2019re having a hell of a time finding welders and electricians. Can you help?\u2019 I say, \u2018I don\u2019t know. How many do you need?\u2019\u201d And the number is massive: BlueForge says an estimated 100,000 workers in critical manufacturing trades are needed over the next 10 years for the next-generation submarine fleet.<\/p>\n
When he was asked where those future workers could be found, Rowe\u2019s answer was: \u201cThey\u2019re in the eighth grade.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is the trouble, as Rowe sees it. Companies across the economy\u2014Ford and General Motors, big-box retailers, manufacturers, and defense contractors\u2014are competing for workers who will take years to develop. \u201cYou can\u2019t recruit out of the eighth grade,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Linda McMahon\u2019s answer<\/h2>\n
McMahon agreed with Rowe\u2019s premise, but focused on the institutional changes needed to build a larger pipeline. She said the Education Department has been working with the Labor Department to increase emphasis on workforce training and speed the route into skilled jobs.<\/p>\n
Her preferred model begins before graduation. High schools, she said, should work more closely with community colleges, technical schools, and vocational programs so students can graduate with both a high-school diploma and a usable credential.<\/p>\n
A student could begin with electrical work, for instance, and then add credentials in HVAC or welding. The point is to allow young people to enter the workforce more quickly, avoid unnecessary costs, and continue accumulating skills over time.<\/p>\n
McMahon also urged schools to introduce hands-on learning much earlier, including virtual welding and electronics programs that can make technical work feel tangible and attractive to younger students.<\/p>\n
But her sharpest point was directed at parents and the status hierarchy around higher education. Skilled work, she argued, should not be described as what a student does when college did not work out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not just, \u2018Boy, my kid really wasn\u2019t smart enough to go to college, so I guess he\u2019ll be an electrician or a plumber,\u2019\u201d McMahon said.<\/p>\n
A \u2018purple\u2019 workforce<\/h2>\n
Rowe pushed the conversation further. The problem is not simply that too many people steer students away from the trades, he said. It is that the country still imagines intellectual and practical work as separate worlds.<\/p>\n
He questioned the utility of the labels \u201cblue collar\u201d and \u201cwhite collar,\u201d particularly in places such as Detroit and his hometown of Baltimore, where those identities are deeply embedded. Maybe, he suggested, the next generation of work has \u201ca more gray or purple hue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rowe then held up his smartphone as an emblem of that change.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s my liberal arts degree,\u201d he said, arguing that a smartphone with an internet connection gives anyone access to \u201c99% of the known information.\u201d He said he had just recently watched a lecture from MIT for free from a hotel room.<\/p>\n
His point was not that education is obsolete. It was that intellectual ambition is no longer confined to a campus, or to the students who take a conventional academic route. Nor should people with elite degrees be insulated from the value of learning a physical trade, he argued. <\/p>\n
Recalling the political line that America needs \u201cfewer philosophers and more welders,\u201d Rowe offered his own version: \u201cOur country needs more philosophers who can run an even bead and more welders who can talk intelligently about the Stoics and think critically,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The new industrial mix<\/h2>\n
Duffy tied that argument to the changing nature of manufacturing and defense. Newer companies in the defense-industrial base, he said, are combining technology and manufacturing in ways that do not fit older workforce categories.<\/p>\n
The need, he said, is for people with skills rather than a particular occupational label\u2014and for \u201cflexible factories and flexible workforce\u201d capable of responding to shifting industrial demands.<\/p>\n
That made Rowe\u2019s demographic warning more than a slogan about empty trade-school seats. The panel was really arguing for a different education hierarchy: one in which the future welder may be an autodidact with access to MIT lectures, the future engineer may understand the shop floor, and skilled work is no longer cast as the alternative to an intellectually serious life.<\/p>\n
The workforce of the future, Rowe suggested, may not be blue collar or white collar. It may be purple.<\/p>\n
For this story,\u00a0<\/em>Fortune\u00a0journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n#Mike #Rowe #Americas #great #tradesperson #shortage #dont #care #politics #Math #doesnt #care<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mike Rowe offered a blunt way … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[414,2464,331,2268,8775,574,537,1840,275,938,8776,3976,8777],"class_list":["post-5698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-americas","tag-care","tag-doesnt","tag-dont","tag-ford-motor","tag-great","tag-jobs","tag-math","tag-mike","tag-politics","tag-rowe","tag-shortage","tag-tradesperson"],"yoast_head":"\n
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