What do you want to be when you grow up?
Do you remember being asked that question as a child? What was your answer? Popular answers I remember from my own childhood included occupations like fireman, teacher, construction worker, and veterinarian.
What did those occupations have in common? They do things that are easy to identify. That’s probably why popular answers didn’t include things like middle manager, associate, and administrative assistant.
In fact, now that I think about it, I don’t remember a single child ever raising his or her hand to utter a profound desire to send and read emails all day. Yet, that’s what many of us seem to do for hours on end most days of the week.
It’s no wonder there’s a sense of existential angst that hangs over many people who now call the corporate world home. Who would’ve thought that simple question from childhood would turn out to portend what has become a lifelong struggle for so many: the search for job satisfaction.
While dollars and cents help pay the bills, many people have learned that doing something that has meaning and gives them satisfaction is ultimately more important than the exact balance in their checking account at the end of the week.
If you’re a parent or an educator who has the chance to speak into the lives of a younger generation, how do you help them choose a career that will give them job satisfaction? Why not look at current occupations to see which workers express the most satisfaction with their career choice?
We’re not going to take an in-depth look at all the possible occupations out there, but we will examine a recent GlobeNewswire article highlighting Angi’s Skilled Trades Report 2024 that shows “exceptionally high job satisfaction in the skilled trades industry.”
Does this surprise you? I guess that would depend upon your experience with the skilled trades. So many parents and even experienced educators have often overlooked the skilled trades when giving career advice to youth, opting instead to point them toward college degrees that lead to jobs like doctor, lawyer, nurse, or accountant.
While those occupations can certainly be satisfying, they also often come with a large financial burden from years in post-secondary education. However, at least they’re usually seen as jobs to be proud of, as opposed to skilled trades positions that have often had a stigma attached to them as “less than.”
Perhaps this new report will help to change some minds. “According to Angi’s data, a staggering 90% of tradespeople are satisfied with their careers, a number that has grown since the pandemic. This high level of satisfaction stands out when compared to other industries.”
Why do the skilled trades have so many happy workers? The Angi report focuses on three primary factors:
- Job Security: While advanced automation technologies, such as robots, have long been rumored to threaten jobs, most workers have found that they end up working alongside these new forms of technology or even acquiring new skills to be able to operate, maintain, troubleshoot, and repair them. However, a new form of this technology—artificial intelligence or AI—does appear to be threatening jobs in several industries, “from software development to media to research to education.” You’ll notice the skilled trades aren’t on that list. “While concerns about AI replacing jobs are prevalent across industries, skilled trades professionals report feeling secure.”
- Job Satisfaction: With 90% of skilled tradespeople reporting high job satisfaction, the authors of the Angi report asked why and learned that workers identified “finding meaning and value in their work, the overall compensation and flexible work hours” as primary reasons.
- Job Availability: We’ve all read stories about college students graduating without a job and then spending months working in unrelated fields as they search for a desired position. What about the skilled trades? If you weren’t already aware of the skills gap, there’s high demand for skilled tradespeople and not nearly enough workers to fill all the open positions. That’s why many industries offer “above average wages” and “flexible work schedules” to attract the talent they so desperately need.
These findings are not earth-shattering news to those familiar with the skilled trades. Many people have known for years that workers find job satisfaction in the skilled trades, yet there continue to be hundreds of thousands of jobs that go unfilled. How can parents, educators, and industry representatives work together to close the skills gap and get more students interested in careers that will provide the job satisfaction they desire?
The authors of the Angi report asked a variety of workers about their outlook on the skills gap and how to close it. Although younger workers (those aged 25-44) “tend to be more optimistic about the future of the [skilled labor] shortage…they are more likely to say younger people are not joining the trades due to stigmas surrounding trade roles.”
In addition to the “historical stigma” of the skilled trades, those surveyed also identified “a lack of exposure to trade careers paths in high school” as a significant factor contributing to the ongoing skills gap problem. One potential solution: 65% of respondents “said increased investment in high school trade preparation programs would help address this” issue.
A recent Forbes article by Preston Cooper posed another potential solution: when helping students think about future careers and potential post-secondary learning institutions, encourage them to “make stops at one or more technical colleges: schools which prepare students for careers in one of the skilled trades, often in two years or less.”
The author visited one of Texas State Technical College’s (TSTC) campuses and gained “a new appreciation for how rigorous and rewarding these fields [the skilled trades] can be—and how that rigor pays off for students when it comes time to start a career.”
Cooper notes that data shows that “the median graduate of a two-year degree program at TSTC starts off with a salary of $39,000—roughly equivalent to the median for all four-year institutions in Texas. In other words, TSTC delivers an equivalent economic return to a bachelor’s degree for around half the time investment. Some individual programs fare even better.”
He is quick to point out, though, that the skilled trades career path is not necessarily for everyone: “It seems many students underestimate the rigor of the coursework and the difficulty of mastering a technical trade. There’s an unfair stereotype that technical schools are the next-best option for people who can’t succeed at a four-year institution. But technical schools are often just as demanding as traditional colleges, if not more so.”
The conclusion is clear: we must do more to educate the next generation of workers about the options available in the skilled trades. This effort must include all interested parties, including parents, educators, and industry representatives. The historical stigma associated with the skilled trades will eventually fade away if students learn how challenging, satisfying, and lucrative positions in the skilled trades can be.
For years, Amatrol has been helping with this effort by working hand-in-hand with industry and educational institutions to design training programs featuring eLearning curriculum and hands-on experience with trainers equipped with industrial components workers will encounter on the job.
The experts at Amatrol know how rewarding careers in manufacturing and other skilled trades can be, and they’ve been dedicated for years to helping learners gain the knowledge and hands-on skills they need to secure satisfying jobs.
Amatrol’s training programs include cutting-edge technologies in a wide variety of areas, including electrical, electronics, automation, HVACR, process control, pneumatics, hydraulics, and more. Visit Amatrol online to learn more about its many different types of industrial training programs. For more information about how Amatrol can help you inspire and train the next generation of workers, contact an expert at Amatrol today!
