Skilled trade workers are in big demand and short supply and it just might be a career pathway you should consider. WorkingNation and Scripps News have partnered on a new series, Fire Up Your Career, to explore the types of jobs available, what employers are doing to attract talent, and how you can get the skills needed for these good-paying jobs popping up all across the country. Read the article and listen to the podcast, then watch the video below of WorkingNation on Scripps News discussing what’s driving the demand and creating new job opportunities in the skilled trades.

In this episode of Work in Progress, we’re talking about the shortage of skilled trade workers and what employers can do about it. I am joined by Brooke Weddle, McKinsey & Company senior partner and co-author of the McKinsey report Tradespeople Wanted: The Need for Critical Trade Skills in the U.S.

The country is facing a hiring crunch for skilled workers such as carpenters, electricians, welders, and plumbers. What’s behind the critical demand for talent in the trades? Weddle says the shortage is not new, but the demand has skyrocketed over the past few years.

“That comes from things like the bipartisan infrastructure law. It comes from the energy transition. It comes from infrastructure investments beyond the Biden bipartisan infrastructure law. We see things like the CHIPS Act,” she explains.

“Two important supply-side trends are decreasing the number of skilled laborers in the U.S. workforce: the aging U.S. population and too few younger people entering the trades.” according to the report.

Weddle adds, “We are not seeing enough new entrants into those skilled trade roles, so thus the gap that we observe. It’s troubling because it’s getting in the way of productivity and performance of a lot of organizations.”

The report estimates that cost of the worker shortage to U.S. companies is over $5 billion. “We’re not talking about small numbers here. And having worked with many industrial manufacturing companies that are employing these skilled trades, I can tell you that this is not a HR topic. This is a CEO topic,” Weddle tells me in the podcast.

“If you listen to any earnings call of a large industrial company in the past 12, 24 months, I would be hard-pressed to find one that is not talking about workforce issues, whether it’s acquiring that talent or retaining that talent or making that talent more productive,” she says.

The report finds that the demand for workers in the skilled trades is only going to increase based on McKinsey’s analysis on the data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and talking with employers.

Weddle and I discuss some ideas of how employers can attract and retain new workers to fill current and future roles, including working locally with a variety of partners.

“So involving others in the community, whether those are economic development organizations, workforce councils. There is obviously the big role to play on the educational provider side. As we know, that is certainly not just higher ed, but it is community colleges. It is vocational schools.

“One of the things that we’ve seen is that when you’re orchestrating and integrating at this regional level, then you’re able to much more quickly match what are the skills and goals we need to how do we build the workforce that is required?

“I would say failure is not an option. We must be optimistic, but we must be smart optimists. We need to find new innovative ways to work together,” Weddle tells me.

We go deeper into specific examples of how this regional partner approach is getting results. We also talk about some of the reasons younger adults might not want to join the skilled trades and how employers can address those issues to attract a new generation of workers.

You can listen to the entire conversation here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can read the McKinsey & Company Tradespeople Wanted report here.

All this week, WorkingNation and our partner Scripps News will continue to explore the opportunities in the skilled trades, what’s driving the demand for workers, and programs that are helping to fill the worker shortfall.

I joined Scripps News’ Morning Rush this morning to discuss today’s podcast.

Tune into Scripps News each morning at 9:45 am ET to hear from our WorkingNation team as part of our Fire Up Your Career special coverage.

You can also find more of our ongoing WorkingNation coverage on the skilled trades here on our website.

Episode 330: Brooke Weddle, senior partner, McKinsey & Company
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, editor-in-chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4
Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode here
Work in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here