Mike Rowe offered a blunt way to describe America’s skilled-worker shortage: The country is losing tradespeople faster than it is replacing them.
“For every five tradespeople who retire this year, two replace them,” Rowe said during a Ford Pro Accelerate panel on workforce development. “Five out, two in. I don’t care how you vote. I don’t care what your politics are. Math doesn’t care either.”
The host of Dirty Jobs has made variations of that argument for years. But at Ford’s gathering, Rowe’s warning about welders, electricians, and other skilled workers became the opening to a more expansive conversation with Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Michael Duffey, undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment at the U.S. Department of War, about what the country gets wrong when it treats college and career training as opposing paths.
The emerging argument was not merely that Americans need more people in the trades. It was that the language of “blue-collar” and “white-collar” may no longer describe the jobs employers need to fill—or the education workers need to navigate them. Try “purple,” Rowe said.
Speaking of rather skewed math: Almost 90% of jobs created since Trump’s reelection have gone to women — for one specific reason. “The American economy is increasingly geared toward services, such as healthcare, childcare, education and elder care. ‘This is a central story of what happens when a country gets richer, more productive, and yes — older,’ [economist Justin Wolfers] said. All of these jobs have historically been associated with women, the so-called ‘pink-collar economy,’ and still suffer from a lack of male interest, he argued.”