Whether we are trying to make America “Stronger Together” or “Make America Great Again,” there exists a national catastrophe that requires nothing short of a national cultural pivot, something akin to Theodore Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” or Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” in which a national crisis required a transformational shift in national priorities to protect the health and safety of the American people. As was true in 1910 and in 1933, we now need a national movement to attract and educate enough skilled tradespeople to fix the declining economic health of the construction trades industry and crumbling infrastructure.
While the narrative is slowly changing from “college readiness” to “career readiness,” we have to overcome what has been a cultural norm in which, “for two or three generations, the focus has been to go to college, get a degree, and, in doing so, ensure a brighter future with more access to employment,” Joshua Wright wrote in “America’s Skilled Trades Dilemma: Shortages Loom As Most-In-Demand Group Of Workers Ages.”