Imagine a world where you get recruited during your junior year in high school for a welding job that starts at $24 per hour . . . or you can spend $60-90,000 a year for 4+ years to get a college degree in a field that might not get you a job.
A $70,000 Salary, No College Debt: High-School Shop Students Attract …
PHILADELPHIA—Elijah Rios won’t graduate from high school until next year, but he already has a job offer—one that pays $68,000 a year.
Rios, 17 years old, is a junior taking welding classes at Father Judge, a Catholic high school in Philadelphia that works closely with companies looking for workers in the skilled trades. Employers are dealing with a shortage of such workers as baby boomers retire. They have increasingly begun courting high-school students like Rios—a hiring strategy they say is likely to become even more crucial in the coming years.
Employers ranging from the local transit system to submarine manufacturers make regular visits to Father Judge’s welding classrooms every year, bringing branded swag and pitching students on their workplaces. When Rios graduates next year, he plans to work as a fabricator at a local equipment maker for nuclear, recycling and other sectors, a job that pays $24 an hour, plus regular overtime and paid vacations.
“Sometimes it’s a little overwhelming—like, this company wants you, that company wants you,” says Rios, who grew up in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington around drug addicts and homelessness, and says he was determined to build a better life for himself. “It honestly feels like I’m an athlete getting all this attention from all these pro teams.”
Increased efforts to recruit high-schoolers into professions such as plumbing, electrical work and welding have helped spur a revitalization of shop classes in many districts. More businesses are teaming up with high schools to enable students to work part-time, earning money as well as academic credit. More employers are showing up at high school career days and turning to creative recruiting strategies, as well.
Employers say that as the skilled trades become more tech-infused, they anticipate doing even more recruitment at an early age, because they need workers who are comfortable programming and running computer diagnostics. “I’m not looking to hire the guy I used to have 20 years ago,” says Bob Walker, founder of Global Affinity, the Bristol, Pa.-based manufacturer who offered Rios a job. The equipment he uses is highly advanced, including a $1.7 million steel laser cutter, and he says he needs tech-savvy workers to operate it.
Angie Simon, until recently chief executive of a mechanical contractor in California, in 2021 started the “Heavy Metal Summer Experience,” a nonprofit summer program that exposes high-school students to careers in the trades, including welding, plumbing and piping. She is now executive director of the program, which is free to participants who apply. It will enroll 900 students this summer in 51 locations across the country, mostly hosted by local contractors who often hire former campers after they graduate.
“You got to stop thinking someone else is going to solve your problem,” says Simon, whose former company at times struggled to fill certain roles. “Why don’t you do something about it?”
Jenny Cantrill, 18, is working at Cannistraro, a plumbing and HVAC mechanical contractor that hosted her summer camp in Seaport, Mass. She credits the camp for piquing her interest in plumbing, and accepted Cannistraro’s job offer without looking elsewhere. “I already had that connection,” she says.
A decade ago, administrators often snubbed employers in the skilled trades who tried to get a table at a high school career fair, says Aaron Hilger, CEO of the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors’ National Association. But with more high schools trying to give students alternatives to college, he says, that attitude has changed.
Constellation Energy, an operator of U.S. nuclear power plants based in Baltimore, offers maintenance technician and equipment-operator roles that are open to high-school graduates without four-year college degrees, and pay as much as six figures. “These are family-sustaining careers,” says Ray Stringer, a vice president overseeing workforce development at the company. Last year, Constellation launched a work-based learning program outside Chicago that invites high-school students to shadow workers at the company’s nuclear facilities while also earning community-college credit. . . . STORY CONTINUES AT LINK ABOVE