While countless millennials fret about how they can pay for college, high-paying blue collar jobs are going unfilled and there’s a growing gap between supply and demand for skilled labor.
Companies like 84 Lumber Co. are spending millions of dollars on ads to remind millennials that learning a trade can be more profitable than earning a college degree. Bloomberg reported that the lumber company pays manager trainees about $40,000 annually and employees in charge of the biggest stores can make upward of $200,000 to $1 million per year.
Lumber isn’t the only industry desperately looking for skilled labor. The Associated General Contractors of Colorado and Carpentry Contractors Co. in Minnesota are spending millions of dollars on ads trying to lure prospective workers to learning a trade instead of going to college.
The myth about college is that, without a degree, students will experience a huge loss in revenue throughout their lives. While that’s certainly true in comparison to high school dropouts, students that don’t finish a traditional four-year degree on time aren’t doing much better than most of the people who go to a trade school.
About 40 percent of college attendees drop out before ever earning a degree and nearly two-thirds of those who do complete school take longer than four years to graduate.
Staying in school for longer than four years can cost students $70,000 per year in lost wages and that doesn’t include the increased cost of student loans. While trade school students start off at a lower salary in many cases, their training costs less than a college degree and only lasts about two years, which gives them more earning years.
So while millennials make the mistake of spending tens-of-thousands of dollars on worthless liberal arts degrees, the path to the middle class could be as simple as learning to work with your hands.
