If You’re Hiring for the Trades, Word of Mouth Is Already Beating You
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The pay is real. The typical trade worker earns $65,000 a year, skilled construction workers earn a median of $75,000, and plant operators earn $84,000, according to ZipRecruiter Economic Research. Most (68%) carry no student debt. And 77% would choose the trades again, with 82% saying they’d recommend the field to a younger worker.
Demand is surging, too. Job openings jumped by 34% in construction and 32% in manufacturing over the past year, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that solar jobs will grow by 182% through 2034. Meanwhile, 45% of current trade workers say they regularly cover the workload of more than one person because their employer can’t staff up fast enough. We see this constantly on the staffing services side of our business: demand for skilled trades workers keeps climbing while the way people discover these careers hasn’t changed much since the 1990s.
The credential gap makes this more expensive than it looks. Apprenticeship-trained workers earn a median of $91,000, compared to $65,000 for the self-taught, yet only 14% of current trade workers actually completed an apprenticeship. Half learned on the job. Nearly a third are self-taught or picked it up from friends and family.
“By nearly every measure, trade jobs offer stability, good compensation, and satisfaction in the American economy. And yet, the workforce pipeline feeding them is fragmented, informal, and increasingly strained,” said Nicole Bachaud, an economist at ZipRecruiter Economic Research.
The trades keep proving my point about four-year degrees not being the only path to a good living. A $91,000 median for apprenticeship-trained workers, with no student debt attached, beats the outcome plenty of college grads land with six figures of debt to show for it. But the pipeline problem is really a marketing problem. Half of these workers found their career through word of mouth, and only 16% found it online. Compare that to how aggressively colleges recruit, and the gap explains itself. We wrote about this exact mismatch a few weeks ago when we looked at why it now takes longer to hire an electrician than a software developer: employers are competing for a shrinking pool of candidates who mostly found the field by accident.
The AI angle deserves a look, too. Bachaud’s data found that only 7.9% of trade workers say automation is reducing the need for their skills. Most (55%) say it changed their tools without increasing their workload, and 37% say it made the job easier or safer. If I’m advising a young person hedging against AI displacement risk, the trades belong on that list, right alongside the debt-free paycheck.
“Relying on word-of-mouth recruiting and informal on-the-job training is no longer a viable strategy for the broader economy,” Bachaud said. She’s right, and the cost shows up everywhere. “When construction roles go unfilled, houses take longer to build, and home prices go up. When electricians are in short supply, the electrification of new data centers slows technological advancements,” she said.
The Claims Number Looks Calm, But the Hiring Number Doesn’t
New unemployment claims fell again last week. Initial claims came in at 215,000 for the week ending July 4, down 2,000 from the prior week’s revised 217,000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. The 4-week moving average dropped to 218,750. For context, initial claims sat at 228,000 in the same week last year, so layoffs are running below where they were 12 months ago.
Continuing claims tell a different story. Insured unemployment rose 8,000 to 1,814,000 for the week ending June 27, and it has climbed steadily from the late-April low of 1,758,000, a rise of roughly 56,000 over two months. No state triggered the Extended Benefits program.
At the state level, New Jersey posted the biggest jump in new claims (+7,262), followed by Connecticut (+2,503) and Massachusetts (+1,823), which the state attributed to a layoff in educational services. California saw the biggest drop, down 6,158. Puerto Rico (2.5%), Minnesota (2.2%), and New Jersey (2.1%) have the nation’s highest insured unemployment rates.
The claims data keeps telling a two-part story I’ve flagged before, including back when claims first dropped to 205,000. Employers still refuse to let people go. Layoffs are running below last year’s pace, and initial claims have been stuck in the low 200s all year.
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Staffing Pros Are the Most Confident People in the Economy Right Now
Employee confidence ticked up in June after hitting a record low in May. Glassdoor’s Employee Confidence Index, which tracks the share of U.S. workers who feel positive about their employer’s next six months, rose to 44% from 43.7%, according to Glassdoor chief economist Daniel Zhao. Zhao ties the small rebound to cautious optimism that energy prices may have peaked as the U.S. and Iran navigate a fragile ceasefire.
We flagged the April record low of 43.8% here two months ago. May broke that record again, dropping to 43.7%. A move from 43.7% to 44% is a rounding error, and I’d treat it that way.
The industry breakdown is where this gets interesting. Hotels and travel accommodation took the hardest hit, down 11.5 percentage points from a year ago, even with the World Cup bringing travelers through in June. Telecom is down 9.2 points year over year, insurance is down 8.2, and IT is down 7.6. Rising interest rates appear to be dragging on real estate (down 4.3) and construction (down 2.5).
A few sectors are bucking the trend. Government and public administration confidence jumped 9.2 points year over year, transportation and logistics rose 5.9, and human resources and staffing posted the highest confidence of any industry in June at 54.7%.
The HR and staffing number caught my attention. Staffing and HR professionals sit at the top of the confidence table, and they’re the people closest to daily hiring activity: the calls, the requisitions, the offers that go out or don’t. When the group with the clearest view of the job market feels better than everyone else, I read that as a signal the market is more stable than most workers fear.
By seniority, entry-level workers improved slightly month over month but remain down 1.8 points from last year. Senior-level employees gave back May’s jump and now sit 2.1 points below last June. Mid-level workers are the quiet winners here, up 1.6 points year over year. The anxiety appears to have moved up the org chart. Leaders can see more of what’s coming; individual contributors are mostly guessing, and guessing feels worse.
Pair this with the claims data above, and the picture sharpens. Workers feel worse than the layoff numbers alone would justify. If your job disappears right now, the odds of a fast rebound are lower than they’ve been in years, even though the headline claims number looks calm. The gap between how the data reads and how workers feel shows up in exit interviews and counteroffers long before it shows up in any government report.
