Blue-Collar Jobs Are Not Going Away, But the Workforce Is.

A take on higher ed, the fading blue-collar workforce, and what we should be doing about it.

It’s time to start talking about the unrelenting push for college degrees and the fading blue-collar workforce. I’ve been seeing a trend pick up over the last year regarding the retiring Baby Boomer workforce coupled with the decreasing amount of people entering the workforce to replace these jobs left behind by retirees. Let’s get into it.

The Silver Tsunami

In 2024, the workforce data company Lightcast published a report titled, “Demographic Drought - The Rising Storm.” The “storm” in reference here is the large Baby Boomer generation (those born between 1946 to 1964) beginning to retire from the workforce. Some are calling it the “Silver Tsunami.” While the entire report is interesting, here are my main takeaways:

• Baby Boomer gen makes up about 76 million Americans.

• Boomers are retiring (becoming ‘consumers’) and are leaving behind a large workload that the current US workforce (‘producers’) and Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is not keeping up with.

  • Current workforce levels are mainly being sustained by immigration.

• Many of the jobs left behind are in traditional “blue-collar” or healthcare related fields, such as construction, manufacturing, and adult-care.

• Generational pressure to go to college and get a degree has been effective in its goal, and now jobseekers with degrees outweigh the number of job openings requiring one, while more laborious and traditional blue-collar jobs go unfilled.

There are many factors involved, so I’ll keep the focus on the fact that traditional blue-collar jobs are not going away but the workforce is. Several decades ago, going to college and getting a degree guaranteed job security and a higher paying salary. The workforce was large and jobs were competitive, but an education could set you apart and make you a valuable employee. This sentiment has been carried down through generations, encouraging young adults to go to college because that meant higher potential to achieve the American Dream.

And now?

Now - jobs in construction, manufacturing, healthcare (caveat here because it often does require a degree), and other fields are seeing a decline in supply of available and capable workers. In general, people are not gravitating to these sectors anymore, not with their shiny new diplomas and heaping mounds of student loan debt. Blue-collar jobs don’t seem to have the same appeal or popularity as the work-from-home-hiding-behind-keyboard jobs. In the words of Kim K, “It seems like nobody wants to work these days.”

Student Loans and Job Insecurity

In this podcast episode from The Intelligence, put out by the Economist, it discusses the decreasing returns for post-graduate degrees in the US and Great Britain. Education has turned into a sort of “arms race” (competition of capability) in the workforce, with post-grad degrees and certificates becoming one of the fastest growing areas for education as more and more people attend university for 4-year degrees. While college degrees used to separate individuals from the rest of the workforce, now they have become the minimum standard for basic entry level positions (I’ll go on that tangent another time) in an increasingly competitive, and well educated, workforce. In order to stand out now, people are going back to school to receive more education.

This fear of missing out (FOMO) on the university experience and future job prospects is growing, driving students to go to university before they know what they want to do or what the payoff will be. This sentiment often leaves students saddled with high debt, low wages, and low job prospects. To fix the situation, they’re encouraged to go to post-grad, where the cycle continues.

This obviously isn’t everyones experience, but I speak as someone who is a little too familiar with the cycle. I went to undergrad, picking a degree that interested me but offered no solid job opportunities, and then I went and got a post-grad degree because I could not find a worthwhile job in Portland that would pay me over $20/hour with my undergrad degree. Unfortunately, the MPA hasn’t paid off either. Yet. I’m playing the long game…

One of my mistakes was not looking critically at future job prospects for the degree I was getting. Not all degrees are created equally. Some technical degrees (4-year and grad) offer higher pay-offs, but about 40% of masters courses offer no financial return, or leave you WORSE OFF after time and money spent.

One thing to point out here is that the US federal government has no policy or limit on the amount it will loan students for education, including post-grad degrees. With no limits or inhibitions on how much money students can be loaned for education, universities are encouraged to raise fees for post-grad, further obliterating the future returns for those students. With half of government student loans going toward post-grad education, the questions arise of how these loans will get repaid, and who will be paying them. *cue intimidating music*

The Intelligence segment ends with ideas like limiting the amount of money lent for specific degrees, warning students before they enroll in programs statistically shown to have low returns, and generally better educating individuals on what they’re signing up for before incurring $100k+ in debt.

Here’s My Thought

If the payoff for traditional 4-year and post-grad degrees is diminishing because of saturation, and we’re seeing an increasing demand in the workforce for blue-collar/trade school jobs, then shouldn’t we be incentivizing people to consider options outside of university?

If government is genuinely concerned about the future workforce filling jobs left behind by Baby Boomers, especially in more labor-intensive industries, then they need to pivot their relationship with the university system and consider incentives for other avenues of work and education. Continuing to loan out money for degrees with diminishing payoffs seems to clearly be a bad investment. Some might even say… bubble-like… but we’ll get into that next time.

Looking back, would knowing this information change my approach to my education? Probably not.

Growing up, my brothers and I worked for my dad in general contracting, going to worksites with him and doing anything from painting trim to framing a house or digging septic tanks. Back then, I didn’t know what I wanted to do (precursor to the rest of my life), but I knew I didn’t want to stay in construction and dig more septic tanks. It’s not exactly what every girl dreams about.

Or maybe there just wasn’t enough government incentive to stick with it? But I’d seen how hard my dad worked, and we still faced a lot of instability during the 2008 recession. College seemed like the obvious choice.

I can tell you now though that my friends and family in more laborious or traditional blue-collar industries don’t have student loans and are making good money. Woohoo! They’re the ones who took a risk by not going to college, and their pay-off is increasing and, I think, will continue to do so.

I mean, I’m sure we’ve all noticed the increase in costs for services like home repairs, plumbing, and electricity, to name a few, with industry forecasts suggesting 5-7% increase in costs for construction in 2025. A large factor in these cost increases? Labor shortages. And labor shortages = job security and higher wages.

There is a lot to unpack in this topic, but here is what I want you to take away: people with degrees saturate the workforce, and certain (non-degree) jobs will always be around and in demand. Artificial intelligence probably won’t be putting shingles on your roof any time soon.

I’m not trying to come after the university system… yet, but I do think it’s time the federal government take a long, hard look at itself and future workforce projections and reevaluate the way it loans out money for education. I haven’t thoroughly thought through the ethics of potential policies that would limit the types of degrees loans can go towards, but I don’t think promising young adults job security if they obtain a college degree is ethical anymore either.

4-year degrees are the new high school diploma, post-grad degrees are the new 4-year degree, and trade school certificates might be the new way to separate yourself from the workforce and feel special again.

We’ll end with a poll: