Skip to main content

A Return To Skilled Trades?

Recently, I have read a lot of blogs and articles voicing the concern that America is loosing its desire to "work" and that we are outsourcing all our manual or manufacturing work overseas.  If you have ever seen the show Dirty Jobs on the Discovery and/or Science channel, you'll recognize Mike Rowe. Below is a fidoe he made concerning this topic: http://www.mikeroweworks.com/2009/07/mikes-mission-video/

This video introduce mikeroweworks.com and his plea to keep the "honesty" in an honest day's work. The synopsis of his plea is that his experiences as a traveling short-term apprentice for trade-type jobs has lead him to conclude that Americans are avoiding hard work or "dirty jobs" and that America is loathe to do the type of work to keep American strong. He feels that we have all become American Idles (not Idols).

So this begs the question:  "What is the likelihood that the tide can be reversed to show that jobs once considered "dirty (brown), honest jobs" which now fall under the umbrella of "blue collar" or manual labor, can be considered good, well paying, skilled labor?

I believe that this can happen. As Mike puts it: Brown before Green.

One thing about "skilled" trades: they CANNOT be shipped overseas! Yes, you MIGHT get immigrants to come in and suppress some jobs, but as things get MORE complicated, the skill set requirements for "manual" labor becomes more demanding, and untrained, uneducated laborers will not be able to compete for those jobs.

As an example, my oldest son has foregone college to become an auto mechanic that pays $40/hour! As he goes through the trades he can be earning $75/hour. He is bright enough to be an engineer, but feels "safer" with the skill trades, and plus he saves $200,000 in college costs while generating $100,000 in revenues. It will take him 20 years to make up that difference at zero interest, and 30 years at 6%!

So, economically, it is starting to make sense to look at the "trades" again.  Money, my friends, changes everything.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Moldy Middle

While taking statistics during my quest to get an MBA and while earning my engineering degree, the professors always emphasized the importance of finding the statistical mean of any population by using the Central Mean Theorem (a.k.a the highest point of the Bell Curve). As an engineer, this was essential in order to maximize throughput, minimize cost and waste, and ultimately make a better, faster, cheaper widget. A funny thing happened on the way to the dark side of marketing. I discovered that the only thing in the middle of the road was quite literally dead road kill. I do not know if you remember stores like Bradlees, Ames and Service Merchandise (just to name a few), but they all folded because the environment changed and they were caught trying to service the mythological “average customer.” Part of that change came when Wal-Mart began its juggernaut with the discount department store. Wal-Mart did two things right: 1) Focused on “mobile” consumers, and 2) Fo...

Fortune Cookie of Persistence

There are many things or factors that can determine a person’s success or failure, but one thing that cuts across EVERY successful person I have met or read about or studied is perseverance, persistence, stick-to-itiveness, and determination. As I say, "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. The desire and ability to press on has and always will solve the problems of the human race and divide those who achieve from those who might have been." Incredibly, this ONE characteristic is really what makes a true entrepreneur as testimony to these little factoids: Coca-Cola only sold twenty five (25) bottles in its first year of business! They grossed $50.0 and spent $73.96 on merchandising. But they kept on going and never gave up, and nowadays the sell more than one billion bottles per day! Apple Computer co-founder offered the computer design to Hewlett-Packard five times and was rejected by both HP and Atari (the giant at the time) for acquisition. A...

Your Customers (and your Mother) Always Know

Over the years, I have been amazed at the number of businesses that think they can "get away" with something with their customers. Either by lowering product standards, charging for useless features, making it more difficult to get customer service, or just flat out lying to them. So, I will explain why this is so detrimental with a short little story about a mother and her son and the son's female roommate. It involves the eternal knowledge and wisdom of mothers, and if you try to “pull something over their eyes” they have a way of using your own words to pry the truth out...just like your  customers. ___________________________________________________ A Mother comes to visit her son for dinner. He lives with a female roommate. During the course of the meal, his mother couldn't help but notice how pretty her son's roommate is. Over the course of the evening, while watching the two interact, she started to wonder if there was more between her son and his ro...