Kerby Anderson

Mike Rowe (host “Dirty Jobs”) warns that if President Trump’s tariffs bring manufacturing jobs back to America, those positions will be hard to fill. He was on the Theo Von program to talk about the manufacturing industry.

He explained that if President Trump can reinvigorate the manufacturing sector, the increase in new jobs will pose a problem since we presently have 482,000 open positions in manufacturing already. Adding another 2 or 3 million new jobs will pose a problem. He talked about what I have discussed in previous commentaries, a two-fold problem: a skills gap and a will gap.

He pointed to a survey of 1,000 US-based 18 to 20-year-olds that discovered that three-quarters (74%) perceive a stigma with choosing vocation school over attending a four-year college. Put simply, young adults show little interest in joining the blue-collar workforce because they have not been exposed to the industry in school.

School administrators took shop classes out of high school. That robbed them of the opportunity to see what that kind of work even looks like. Instead, Mike Rowe laments we told a whole generation of kids they must get a four-year college degree.

Mike Rowe also mentioned a statistic that I have documented in previous commentaries. It is the disturbing number (6.8 million) of able-bodied men that are not working and not looking for work. This number of young men is unprecedented.

It is time for educational leaders and industry leaders to change attitudes towards working in manufacturing. It is also time to challenge pastors, parents, and other leaders to encourage this generation to develop a work ethic.