Seven Myths About Blue-Collar Work That Steer Young People Away From the Trades

Here is a curious fact about modern America. We have a shortage of people who can fix a furnace, and a surplus of people who can write a strongly worded paragraph about why furnaces are a problem. Somewhere along the way the country decided that one of these was a career and the other was a fallback.

Let me tell you what happened, folks. For a generation, guidance counselors, magazines and well-meaning relatives told young people that the four-year degree was the only respectable road, and that everything else was for the people who could not make the grade. The advice was delivered with such confidence that nobody checked it. Some of the young people who took it are now doing fine. Some of them are carrying a large loan and a diploma that does not lead to a job. And a great many perfectly good jobs, with real pay and real futures, went unfilled while we congratulated ourselves.

So let us check. Below are seven claims about blue-collar work, each stated fairly, tested against how the trades actually work, and given a verdict. I will use no current wage figures, because they change by year and region and you should read them from the source, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and your own state. The tests here rest on mechanisms, which do not change from one year to the next.

What we mean by the trades

By blue-collar work I mean skilled and semiskilled manual occupations: electricians, plumbers, welders, machinists, carpenters, HVAC technicians, diesel mechanics, lineworkers, heavy-equipment operators and the like. By the trades I mean the skilled occupations among them that are learned through an apprenticeship or a certification path, and often regulated by a license.

A word about the people making the claims. Almost everyone repeating these myths means well. Parents want the best for their children, and for a long time the degree looked like the best bet. The myths are not malicious. They are out of date, and some were never true.

Myth one: "The trades are for people who failed school"

The steelman first. In many American high schools, vocational tracks were once used as a place to put students the system had given up on, and that history left a stain. Some people hold the belief because they saw it happen.

Now the test. Ask what it takes to become a licensed electrician. A person enters an apprenticeship, which means working under a licensed journeyman for several years, logging thousands of paid hours on real jobs. Alongside the work comes classroom instruction in electrical theory, mathematics, the National Electrical Code and safety. At the end, in most states, the apprentice sits an examination to earn the journeyman license. The license can then lead to a master license, and sometimes to the right to pull permits and run a business. A person who cannot read, calculate and follow a code book will not complete that path.

The work is also unforgiving in a way a classroom is not. A miscalculated load or a missed step is not a bad grade. It is a fire, or a callback, or an injury. That demand attracts people who think carefully.

Verdict: false. The trades are for people who like to solve problems with their hands and their heads, and the screening is done by the work itself. The idea that it is a dumping ground says more about the people repeating it than about the people doing the job.

Myth two: "The trades pay poorly"

The claim has an element of truth, which is why it survives. Entry pay for a beginner is modest, as it is in almost every field. A first-year apprentice earns less than a journeyman, and some trades, like any others, pay unevenly by region and by season.

But look at how the pay mechanism works, and notice what the myth leaves out. A registered apprenticeship pays you while you learn. The wage typically starts at a fraction of the journeyman's rate and rises in steps as hours and skills accumulate. By the end, the apprentice is paid the full journeyman rate. Meanwhile there is no tuition bill. That is the central point, and I recommend the arithmetic in Four Years of Wages Versus Four Years of Debt, the Apprenticeship Math, which sets four years of earning against four years of borrowing.

There is a second mechanism. Skilled trades are paid in part for scarcity. When too few people can do a thing and many people need it done, the price of the work rises. When the culture steers people away from a trade, it raises the pay of those who stayed, which is an irony the people steering never intend.

I will not give you a wage figure, since figures age quickly. Look up the electrician, plumber and welder pages in the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook and compare them against the occupations of your choice, and then subtract the cost of the degree that leads to the other occupations.

Verdict: mostly false. Entry pay is modest, as anywhere. The path pays while you learn, costs nothing in tuition and tends to lead to solid earnings. Check the numbers for your own trade and state.

Myth three: "The trades have no future because of automation"

Steelman: machines have replaced human labor in factories for two centuries, and robots now weld, paint and assemble. Why would the trades be spared?

Because of how the work is shaped. Automation works best where the task is repetitive, the environment is controlled and the product is the same every time. A factory line is the ideal case. A plumber's job is the opposite. Every house is different. The pipe is behind a wall nobody drew a plan of. The previous owner did something creative in 1974. The customer says the noise comes "sometimes." Diagnosing a fault in an old building, crawling into an attic, improvising a fix with what is on the truck: this is work in an unstructured environment, which is exactly where machines struggle most.

Then there is demand. Every new house needs wiring and plumbing. Every old house needs repairs. The power grid, the water system and the roads need people to maintain them, and a great many experienced tradespeople are nearing retirement. When a worker retires, the work does not retire with him. It waits for someone to be trained.

I will be honest about the limit of this claim. Nobody can predict what technology will do over a forty-year career, and tools will change, as they have for every trade. A good electrician today works with diagnostic tools a predecessor would not recognize. But the pattern across history is that technology changes how the work is done more often than it removes the worker, and a person who can learn a new tool stays employed.

Verdict: mostly false. Some tasks will be automated. The skilled trades, with their variety and their physical presence, are among the more durable occupations. Staying current is part of the craft.

Myth four: "A degree always pays more"

Steelman, and a serious one. On average, people with bachelor's degrees earn more over a lifetime than people without. That finding is solid and has been repeated for decades.

But two words in the myth are doing the damage: always and more. An average hides the spread. A degree in some fields leads to high earnings. A degree in others leads to a job that does not require one. And a large number of students who enroll never finish, so they carry the debt without the credential. Averages also mix together people who would have succeeded anyway and people who needed the degree, and statistics cannot always separate the two.

Then there is cost. Compare two paths in a labeled hypothetical. A young person goes to a four-year college, borrows, graduates and starts at a low salary while repaying. Another enters an apprenticeship at eighteen, earns from the first day, borrows nothing and holds a journeyman license by twenty-two or so. The question that matters is not which one earns more at age fifty. It is how the two compare at twenty-six, at thirty, at thirty-five, and how much debt each carries. Reasonable people can differ about the answer for a given person, and some professions truly require the degree. Doctors and engineers cannot skip it.

The honest position is that a degree is a tool, and for some jobs it is the right tool and for others it is an expensive way to avoid learning a trade. The student loan system, which lets a young person borrow large amounts with little regard to what the degree will earn, is part of why the question is rarely asked. If you want the legal fight over that system, see Biden v. Nebraska and the Limits of a Secretary's Power to Cancel Debt.

Verdict: false as stated. A degree often pays more, but not always, and not before you subtract what it cost and what you gave up.

Myth five: "You can't own a business in the trades"

This is the one that makes me want to lean into the microphone, because it is the reverse of the truth. The trades are one of the most reliable roads to owning a business in America.

Here is the mechanism. A journeyman gains a license and years of experience. In most states, the next step is a master license or a contractor's license, with its own exam, insurance and sometimes bonding requirements, which vary a great deal from state to state. Once licensed, a tradesperson can pull permits, bid on jobs and hire others. The capital required to start can be small: a truck, tools, insurance and a phone. Compare that to starting a restaurant or a tech company.

The result is that a great many of the plumbing, electrical, roofing, landscaping and HVAC companies in any American town were founded by someone who started as an apprentice. They have employees, trucks with their names on the doors, and the satisfaction of building something their children may inherit. The ownership path is described, step by step, in How a Registered Apprenticeship Works, From the First Day to Journeyman, and the broader business steps are in From Kitchen Table to Open Sign, the First Steps of Starting a Small Business.

There is a limit worth stating. Licensing rules differ by state, and some states make it harder than others to move from employee to owner. That is a policy problem, and it is one conservatives have reason to care about. Occupational licensing that protects the public from real harm is justified. Licensing that mostly shields incumbents from newcomers is a barrier to the very ownership the trades offer.

Verdict: false. The trades are a main road to small business ownership.

Myth six: "Trade work is unsafe by nature"

The steelman is plain: construction, electrical work and heavy equipment involve real hazards, and people do get hurt. That is true and it should not be brushed aside.

But "unsafe by nature" says the danger is unavoidable, and that is where the claim fails. Safety in the trades is a matter of training, equipment and enforcement. Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970, which created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, to set and enforce workplace standards. Apprenticeship programs build safety into the curriculum, and a good contractor knows that an injury costs time, money and a worker. Practices such as lockout procedures, fall protection and protective equipment exist because people learned from accidents and wrote the lessons into rules.

A fair comparison is not between a job site and an office. It is between a trained worker with proper equipment and an untrained one without. Risk varies a great deal by trade and by employer, and a young person should ask any prospective employer about safety training, equipment and record. Anyone who feels unsafe at work can contact OSHA, or the state equivalent.

Verdict: overstated. The work has real hazards, and good training, good equipment and enforcement of the rules reduce them. Choose an employer that treats safety as a requirement and not a slogan.

Myth seven: "Your parents will be disappointed"

The last myth is the most human. Some parents hoped for a diploma on the wall, and a child who chooses the trades fears letting them down.

Let me say something to the young person, and something to the parent. To the young person: what parents want, at bottom, is that you will be independent, secure and respected, and few things deliver that better than a skill the world needs and you own. A paid-for education that leads to a license and a paycheck, with no loan hanging over your head, is a gift to the whole family. To the parent: ask what you actually wanted for your child. If it was a diploma, ask whether the diploma was the point or only the route you knew. If the point was a good life, the trades have an honorable record of producing it.

There is a deeper issue, and it is cultural. We forgot to honor the people who keep the lights on. A thoughtful treatment of that is in Dirty Jobs and Honest Work, Why Pop Culture Rarely Celebrates the Trades. A nation that venerates only the work of the head, and sneers at the work of the hands, has forgotten who built the roads it is driving on.

Verdict: this one is up to your family, but the premise is shaky. Disappointment usually fades when the paychecks, the pride and the lack of debt show up. Talk to your parents and bring the facts.

The Founders and the working hand

Before we close, let me place this in the founding story, since the republic was built by people who respected work. Benjamin Franklin was a printer, and he remained proud of the trade all his life. Paul Revere was a silversmith. George Washington was a surveyor and a farmer. Roger Sherman, who signed both the Declaration and the Constitution, began as a shoemaker. The Founders did not look down on those who worked with their hands. They were often among them.

The republic they designed assumes a citizenry of independent people, owners of their own work, free of any master. Thomas Jefferson's favorite picture of virtue was the independent landholder. A country in which young people are told that skilled work is shameful has drifted a long way from that picture.

What the seven verdicts add up to

Run through the list. Two myths are false outright, two are mostly false, two are overstated or false as stated, and one is a family conversation. Not one of them survives a look at how apprenticeship, licensing and contractor ownership work. That does not mean everyone should enter the trades. A degree is the right path for many people, and some careers require it. The point is that the choice should be made with the facts, and the facts have been hidden under a cultural snobbery that served nobody. If you would like to see how another country handles the matter, German and Swiss Apprenticeships Compared With the American Path makes the comparison.

The case in brief

1. The trades screen their entrants through apprenticeship, exams and a code book, so they are no dumping ground for people who failed school.
2. A registered apprenticeship pays while you learn with no tuition, and scarcity supports pay, but check the figures for your own trade and state.
3. Unstructured, varied physical work is among the occupations hardest to automate, and tools will change but skilled people adapt.
4. A degree often pays more but not always, and the comparison must subtract cost, debt and years without earnings.
5. The trades lead to ownership, they can be made safe by training and enforcement, and a family should weigh the facts before the prejudice.

What you can do: look up the occupation page for one trade in the Bureau of Labor Statistics handbook, then search Apprenticeship.gov for programs near you.