Gen Z Can Fix That: Why Young People Want Blue Collar Jobs

Get the Full StoryGen Z, the first generation raised entirely in the digital age, has officially thrown a wrench into the job market. A demographic adept at navigating the virtual world, Zoomer interest in blue collar trades - of the get-your-hands-dirty variety - is swelling. From plumbing to welding to electrical wiring, specialized trades appeal to over half of Gen Z, who, in last year's Future of the Skilled Trades Report from home improvement company Thumbtack, said increased visibility of blue collar work on social media has had the most significant influence on their thinking.

With student loan debt ballooning, the threat of AI looming, and corporate mistrust at what feels like an all-time high, Credit Karma consumer financial advocate Courtney Alev says it's no surprise that Gen Z is heeding the call of the trades, once drowned out by social pressure to pursue a four-year degree.

In fact, Alev tells PS, not only does 54 percent of anyone with student loans "regret their decision to take on debt for a degree," but exactly half of all Americans now refute the once-universal thinking that four-year college will automatically produce a higher return on investment than trade school, according to Credit Karma's 2024 survey about Gen Z driving a resurgence in blue-collar work. As a result, almost a third of Gen Z working a corporate job right now has considered taking up vocational training.

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Courtney Alev is a consumer financial advocate at digital finance company Credit Karma.

Unsurprisingly, social media may be holding the strings. Last year, almost 80 percent of Gen Z respondents to the Thumbtack survey reported seeing "increased attention to the skilled trades on social media." This appears to especially impact Gen Z women users on apps like TikTok and Instagram, who rank social media as their number one "career path influence," even higher than the influence of their parents. So it tracks that a whopping 52 percent of them now express interest in trades work, almost equal to the 57 percent of Gen Z men who feel the same.

Demonstrating young women's zeal for the trades, the hashtag "blue collar babe" has over 124,000 posts on TikTok, featuring videos from popular women like Australian welder Melissa Martini TheWelderPrincess with 58,000 followers; Washington-based trucker Bethany Lipska SouthernSugar33 with nearly 250,000 followers; and New York based electrician Lexis Czumak-Abreu LexTheElectrician with over 1 million followers.

"Without trade jobs, your heat wouldn't come on, your lights wouldn't come on, you couldn't drive down the road."

Regardless of gender, Gen Z - dubbed the "toolbelt generation" by the Wall Street Journal - sees job security in handy trades like plumbing, which can't easily be mechanized or replaced by AI. And many see thrilling new challenges in the clean energy fields defining the modern economy, especially solar and geothermal, which require highly specialized technical skills.

But while there's an influx of skilled trades content churning up excitement for blue collar work online, there remains a persistent lack of real-life training opportunities for the growing numbers of young people who want to make their living in a vocation. Of Thumbtack's respondents, only 41 percent reported having access to trade programs in school. And despite all the enthusiasm for these careers, trades jobs have not been spared from the worker shortage crisis still spiraling out from the "Great Reshuffle" of the pandemic - and hiring managers are still having a hard time filling open roles.

In a different Thumbtack survey from 2023, 85 percent of respondents agreed that "high schools should do more to tell students about alternative job pathways like trade schools and apprenticeships." But in the meantime, some trades professionals are taking matters into their own hands.

In small-town Pleasantville, OH, Gavin Alexander is in the process of launching the Trades for Life Foundation, an annual scholarship program that he hopes will help two kids from every school in his county seek vocational training each year.

During the pandemic, the 30-year-old farmer and graduate of the Agricultural Tech Institute at The Ohio State University organized a one-off technical trade scholarship competition at his alma mater, a small high school with a graduating class size under 50. That year, Alexander was blown away when eight or nine kids he can't remember exactly applied for trades as varied as carpentry and equine dentistry. The winner graduated from the premiere welding school in the country a couple years ago and is now headed to work on a welding rig.

"At the time, nobody was really doing anything to promote or help kids who aren't going to a four-year degree," he tells PS. "When you think about it, those careers are the backbone of the community. Without those jobs, your heat wouldn't come on, your lights wouldn't come on, you couldn't drive down the road."

In the years since, he's struggled to balance his own work with the demanding nature of running and marketing a charitable foundation. But as of late 2024, he was finalizing a group of board members for Trades for Life, and had recently hosted a successful rodeo fundraiser that put him well over his financial goals and back on track for 2025.

At the rodeo, Alexander chatted with a few current high school students. At first, when he asked them to describe what they consider a "good job," he got a typical response: "whatever makes the most money." But he pushed them to think about it. Does a good job mean you work for a family-oriented company? Does it mean you spend a lot of your day outside? Maybe it does just mean more money, and that's OK, too.

"A lot of kids, once they sit and think about it, they say, 'No one's ever asked me that,'" Alexander says. "No one's ever asked them, 'What's a good job for you?'"

Related:

Unpacking the Workplace Divide Between Gen Z and Millennials

Emma Glassman-Hughes she her is the associate editor at PS Balance. In her seven years as a reporter, her beats have spanned the lifestyle spectrum; she's covered arts and culture for The Boston Globe, sex and relationships for Cosmopolitan, and food, climate, and farming for Ambrook Research.

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