Is the tide turning?

The Wall Street Journal isn’t known as a publication for the trades, but in early February it published two articles that flipped that script.

In “Why unemployment is rising among young college grads,” Allysia Finley explains that despite the prevailing opinion about artificial intelligence, AI is not taking jobs away from college graduates.

She writes: “Government subsidies and public schools have funneled too many young people to credential mills, which churn out grads who lack the skills that employers demand. Many would be better off training in skilled trades for which demand is enormous.”

And in “These white-collar workers actually made the switch to a trade,” Allison Pohle and Te-Ping Chen cite a FlexJobs study that found more than 60% of white-collar workers would consider pivoting to a skilled trade if it offered more money and stability.

The authors interviewed four adults ranging in age from 27-48 who all gave up white-collar desk jobs for a trade; none of them have regretted the choice:

• “When I’m in the mud and I have filled up my muck boots with mud and water, at no point have I ever thought, ‘Man I miss the office,’” says Nick Winters, 27, a software salesman turned electrical apprentice.
• “At 27, Lauren O’Connor was living paycheck to paycheck as a Montessori teacher, making $29 an hour with no benefits. Today, the 33-year-old earns $45 an hour—brazing, welding and soldering pipes for a local contractor.”
• Candace Robinson, 48, switched from being a commercial loan-servicing associate to a cardiovascular sonographer. Her pay is about the same, but she says she would have taken a pay cut. “It’s actually dealing with life and death,” she says, “But it is so much less stressful than when I was just dealing with emails.”
• Ben Neville, 32, is making less money training to be a pilot than he did as an accountant, but he is not concerned. In his new job, Neville says: “There’s always something to learn; it keeps you on your toes.”