‘A very leaky pipeline’: 1.7 million trade jobs will open each year through 2035—and experts are scrambling to figure out how to fill them

Mike Rowe, the host of TV show Dirty Jobs, recently offered a sobering diagnosis for the state of skilled trades jobs today: “For every five tradespeople who retire this year, two replace them.” “Five out, two in,” Rowe said during a Ford Pro Accelerate panel on workforce development. “I don’t care how you vote. I don’t care what your politics are. Math doesn’t care either.

“How long do you want to wait for your toilet to get fixed?” he added. “How long do you want to wait for the lights to come back on when you flip the switch?”

Now economists are putting a number to just how big this shortage is—and what exactly it takes to fill it. The recent State of America’s Skilled Trades report, published by nonprofits Jobs for the Future and the Burning Glass Institute, found there will be 1.7 million skilled trades job openings every year through 2035, including 600,000 new net positions added through the same time period. 

The surge bucks the trend of sluggish job growth and unemployment, which ticked up to 4.2% in September, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Trade job opportunities have exploded in the latest era of technology, in large part a result of the growing AI boom demanding the construction of data centers, as well as increased defense production, and even the growth in demand for affordable housing units. These tradespeople are part of a 18-million strong workforce who added an estimated $3.8 trillion to the U.S. GDP last........

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