I do not dream of labor but…

...picking up a trade sounds pretty cool

By ABHINAYA KASAGANI — akasagani@ucdavis.edu

I realized trade school wasn’t for me when I ran the idea of opening a record store after graduating college past my parents. I spent that year watching reruns of “High Fidelity” — both the John Cusack and Zoe Kravitz versions — and decided that a four-year college degree in English and Cinema & Digital Media would not guarantee me any more financial stability than a small business would. My parents looked horrified as I made several (failed) attempts to convince them that higher education is no longer a guarantee of professional success. With the rising cost of education, job prospects in most fields have begun to seem less and less like a sure thing. Then, right before my freshman year, something unbelievable happened: OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to the world, and skilled trades began making a comeback.

Blue-collar jobs have undoubtedly become a more lucrative career pivot for many members of Gen Z, not only due to automation reducing the number of white-collar jobs available, but also because of the high demand for data center buildouts. Careers like electricians, plumbers and HVAC technicians are not simply regaining popularity because they offer competitive wages; they are also helping build the infrastructure needed to deploy AI. According to a McKinsey report, the number of annual United States hires in blue-collar jobs could be more than 20 times the annual net new jobs between 2022 and 2032.

While the rise of blue-collar jobs — professions that require the development of a specialized technical skill — cannot entirely be pinned on the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), an early global tension with large language models was that they could replace human labor within certain professions, making the technical practice defunct. Rather than spending years paying for a degree that could potentially translate to professional stability, young people realized they could pursue apprenticeships and earn money as they go. 

For those especially wary of student loans, this lack of financial burden has been compelling. Instead of viewing education and employment as separate, trade school treats them as synchronous. Fieldwork, for instance, is not only seen as a component of learning, but one that worked best alongside theoretical instruction; this pedagogical model made it feel as though students’ labor was respected and fairly compensated. 

The current Trump administration has also expressed an interest in “[unleashing] our economy and [delivering] a Blue-Collar BOOM,” with its decisions on federal infrastructure spending, tariffs, labor regulations and immigration policies influencing construction costs and workforce availability. However, the increased interest in blue-collar jobs also reflects people’s attempts to combat the Trump administration’s impacts on the job market. Given the nation’s current climate of social and political instability, it can be deeply liberating to have systems like labor unions to negotiate wages, benefits, workplace protections and opportunities in workers’ best interests, giving them more leverage than they might otherwise have. Additionally, feeling supported can increase workers’ job satisfaction, positively affecting their productivity levels. 

Still, trades are not a universal solution to achieving professional stability. Over time, the possibility of any sort of vocational constancy has become increasingly precarious, with some professions remaining dependent on the completion of a regulated degree to provide access to meaningful financial opportunities. What makes this shift toward trades somewhat significant is not that college is becoming outmoded, but that society is becoming more willing to recognize larger professional possibilities outside of it. 

While I probably would’ve spiraled into massive debt within months of opening a record store — especially since I don’t really concern myself with things like inventory, sourcing or bookkeeping, among other entrepreneurial responsibilities — I would have liked the opportunity to choose. I realized late in life that there were alternative ways of diversifying my portfolio that didn’t take four extra years, and still it was a possibility I was never allowed to entertain.

Now, however, with trades offering us viable routes to financial independence that do not require us to become financially drained from loans or constantly scramble for jobs post-graduation, we are invited to consider a more flexible understanding of career success for ourselves. Whether we choose to be a jack of all trades or a master of one, we must shield ourselves from internalizing antiquated and elitist ideas of skilled trades as secondary to academic credentials and open ourselves to the possibility of opportunity, regardless of how it comes about.

Written by: Abhinaya Kasagani— akasagani@ucdavis.edu

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