Why the Skilled Trades Are Essential for a Free PeopleA cultural shift away from teaching the trades and a growing lack of qualified talent to perform vital work has helped make America more passive and dependent. That needs to change.
By Ben Boychuk
June 11, 2022
The Government Accountability Office on Wednesday revealed that Boeing is having trouble finding qualified workers for its nearly $5 billion Air Force One project. Thanks to COVID-related delays and retirements, the project is understaffed and behind schedule. The aviation giant has already lost $1.1 billion on the deal, which was contracted in 2018 at a fixed price of $3.9 billion and may not be finished until mid-2025.
Not just any warmblood with a wrench can walk in and get a job assembling the president’s jet. Due to the top-secret nature of the aircraft—actually, two specially converted 747-8s that the Air Force officially designates as the VC-25B—anyone working on the project needs to undergo an in-depth background check for a security clearance.
“Employees must meet stringent security requirements to work on the VC-25B program because of its presidential mission,” the GAO explains in its annual report to Congress on the Pentagon’s sundry weapon systems. “VC-25B officials said that Boeing continues to work with the program office to improve the prescreening process for applicants to ensure timely processing of security clearances.”
Because the job concerns the president’s life and safety, would-be workers get extra scrutiny. Have they ever been arrested or smoked pot or traveled extensively abroad? They’d better not lie because federal investigators will ask their friends and their enemies.
Those special circumstances aside, Boeing’s workforce challenges speak to a much greater problem. Fact is, aviation workers are not merely warmbloods with wrenches. They are highly skilled workers in a highly specialized industry. People with the sort of skills Boeing needs are a rare commodity who often command higher-than-average wages.
The problem, then, is a skilled-worker deficit.
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Yet cultural, social, and political trends over the past three decades or so have emphasized a four-year university education at the expense of the skilled trades, which a person could learn at a community college or vocational school in just a year or two. Though people like Mike Rowe have fought valiantly against the perception that “dirty jobs” are somehow bad jobs, at some point, Americans decided physical labor was disreputable and demeaning. “Do your homework and stay in school,” the message went, “or you’ll end up digging ditches for a living!” Put somewhat differently, why be a sweaty plumber or an electrician when you could pursue a glamorous career in business or advertising or the visual arts? (Why indeed.)
As countless data entry “specialists,” cashiers, customer service reps, and baristas across the country have since discovered, a degree in business or finance or—God help us—philosophy or political science is no guarantee of a corner office and a middle- or upper-middle-class lifestyle. Nevertheless, nearly 60 percent of all jobs in the United States today require a college degree.
It’s stupid. We’re putting resources and placing emphasis in the wrong places. Economist Richard Vedder argued more than a decade ago—that is, before the nation’s mounting student-loan debt crisis became a high-profile political cause célèbre—that the United States “overinvests” in higher education.
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Source:
https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/11/why-the-skilled-trades-are-essential-for-a-free-people/
