The contradiction at the center of America\u2019s skilled-labor shortage was distilled into 10 words at Ford Pro Accelerate, the Blue Oval\u2019s giant workforce-development event in Detroit.<\/p>\n
\n
\u201cWe value the skill, but maybe not for my child,\u201d said Chelle Travis, executive director of SkillsUSA, a national workforce-development organization focused on students in career and technical education.<\/p>\n
That tension\u2014respect for the work but lingering resistance to seeing it as an aspirational future for one\u2019s own children\u2014surfaced repeatedly during Travis\u2019s panel. Students, educators, social media creators, and industry advocates described a culture that continues to treat college as the default marker of success, even as employers seek more technicians, mechanics, builders, and other skilled workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t really have a value problem, but we have a knowledge and really a connection problem,\u201d Travis said. \u201cStudents and parents still do not know about all the opportunities, those family-sustaining wage opportunities for students. And it\u2019s still seen as, \u2018It\u2019s not for me\u2019 or \u2018It\u2019s not for my child.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Derrick Feldmann, managing director at the Ad Council Research Institute, who partnered with Ford on a massive survey of young people\u2019s attitudes toward the trades, said the research found a disconnect between what young people say they want from a career\u2014financial stability, fulfillment, and advancement\u2014and how few identify the trades as a route to those goals.<\/p>\n
Just 11% of the students surveyed were genuinely interested in pursuing trade careers, Feldmann said, even though 38% said they would consider one. \u201cIf we were to tell our 18-year-olds and 17-year-olds, \u2018What does the path to college look like?\u2019 They\u2019ll repeat things like, \u2018You apply, you then go for four or five or six years, you then exit and you get a job,\u2019\u201d Feldmann said. \u201cThe same thing even for military service. You go to basic training; you go do these kinds of things. And you start to ask, \u2018What about the trades?\u2019 Silence.\u201d<\/p>\n
While college is not always a simple or linear path, it is institutionally legible. Students know about applications, financial aid, campus visits, majors, and graduation. The skilled trades can appear more fragmented: High school career- and technical-education programs, union apprenticeships, community colleges, private training programs, employer-sponsored training, and direct-entry jobs all offer possible routes, but not every student has access to a counselor, parent, or mentor who can explain the differences.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s easier to go with what\u2019s known than what\u2019s unknown,\u201d Feldmann said.<\/p>\n
Parents and the prestige gap<\/h2>\n
That information gap is also a prestige gap.<\/p>\n
Matt Panella, a carpenter and homebuilder who has built a sizable social media audience, appeared on the panel and said he regularly hears from teenagers who want to pursue the trades but need help making the case to their parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of kids out there that their parents \u2026 for years now, we\u2019ve told kids that the way to success is going to college,\u201d Panella said. \u201cI get a lot of high school kids, ninth grade through 12th, reaching out and saying, \u2018Hey, I want to get into the trades, but my parents don\u2019t feel like it\u2019s a viable career path. What can I do to show them?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Panella said his online presence is partly meant to give young people a visible guide when they lack a personal connection to the industry. He said his father and grandfather helped him enter the field; not every prospective worker has that advantage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had somebody, and I wanted to be that somebody for other people that don\u2019t have that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Tanisha Brana, a Detroit educator who works with students weighing their options after high school, said she encourages families to think of career-tech courses as a low-cost opportunity to test a potential profession.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would recommend that all students and even parents have their kids try a career-tech program first, because it\u2019s low risk. It\u2019s zero dollars. It\u2019s completely free,\u201d Brana said. \u201cI call it the \u2018try it before you buy it\u2019 method.\u201d<\/p>\n
The approach lets a student interested in welding, for instance, spend time in a welding course, meet a mentor, pursue an internship, and learn whether the work actually suits them. If it does not, Brana said, the student has not spent years and thousands of dollars discovering that a chosen major was a poor fit.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven the kids that find out this is not what they thought it was\u2014they paid zero dollars,\u201d she said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t go to college and wait till their third year to want to switch majors.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not college versus trades<\/h2>\n
The panel also rejected the familiar college-versus-trades framing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not an either-or,\u201d Brana said. \u201cSometimes, it\u2019s both. I\u2019m a skilled tradesperson, and I have a master\u2019s degree. I\u2019m a University of Michigan alum.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trade careers involve education, but it may look different from the traditional four-year model: an apprenticeship, certification, a technical degree, employer training, or classroom instruction combined with paid work. The distinction matters because it reshapes the financial calculation facing a teenager and family.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people pay to go to college,\u201d Brana said. \u201cSome people get paid to go to college.\u201d She described students in an auto program who work three days a week, attend school two days a week, and are paid while they train. \u201cThat\u2019s a big difference,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The gender barrier<\/h2>\n
For Dallas Sutton, a 17-year-old automotive student at Detroit\u2019s Breithaupt Career and Technical Center, the stigma is also gendered.<\/p>\n
Sutton said she was encouraged by her late grandfather, a mechanic and pastor, and by her early interest in cars. But she also recognized the rarity of seeing women like herself in the field. \u201cHow cool would it be to see someone who looks like me being a female mechanic?\u201d Sutton said, before answering: \u201cThat would be really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her reasons for learning automotive work are both personal and practical. She said she wanted enough knowledge to avoid being misled or overcharged when her own vehicle needs repairs, and to help other women do the same.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a woman, we\u2019re pushed upon, \u2018Oh, you don\u2019t want to do the dirty work. Leave that to a man,\u2019\u201d Sutton said. \u201cI\u2019m going to fix my own car, and I\u2019m going to buy my own parts, and I know how to do it myself. Just being independent and being a woman of color is very important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Travis argued that exposure needs to begin early, with career exploration, work-based learning, and contact with employers while students are still forming their sense of what types of work belong to people like them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you do not have a knowledgeable adult, that really trusted adult with you, then sometimes it\u2019s hard for a student to see a pathway if they don\u2019t have other examples around for them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The skilled-trades shortage is commonly discussed as an economic problem\u2014one of unfilled jobs, aging workforces, and insufficient training capacity. This panel at Ford Pro Accelerate suggested it is also a status problem. The country depends on skilled workers to construct homes, repair vehicles, maintain infrastructure, and operate increasingly complex industrial systems. But families, educators, and institutions have not always conveyed that dependence as a source of dignity, opportunity, or ambition.<\/p>\n
Until that changes, the challenge will not simply be persuading more young people to enter the trades. It will be persuading the people who love them that doing so is not settling for less.<\/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#skill #child #stigma #bluecollar #jobs #laid #bare<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The contradiction at the cente… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8832,8815,3868,8775,536,537,5608,3076,8831],"class_list":["post-5737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-bare","tag-bluecollar","tag-child","tag-ford-motor","tag-gen-z","tag-jobs","tag-laid","tag-skill","tag-stigma"],"yoast_head":"\n
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