The nation is facing a critical skilled worker shortage in construction and manufacturing, largely because of the misguided perceptions about these industries, one entrepreneur believes.
Young people view jobs in construction as low-paying, dirty jobs for the less educated, Aaron Witt says, when the industry actually "provides what the next generation is looking for."
Witt is the CEO of BuildWitt, a company that seeks to change that perception and partners with industry leaders to recruit talent to a field that's struggling to fill over 300,000 jobs. The 28-year-old entrepreneur started his company out of college when he saw an opportunity to use social media to "tell a dynamic story" about an industry that many people remain uninformed about.
"Our mission is to make the dirt world a better place. The construction industry has a big workforce challenge, and we're building a business to tackle that challenge in a few different ways. Help companies find people, train people, and keep their people more effectively," he told FOX News Digital.
Witt said that like many people his age, he was pushed to take a traditional career path out of high school. He went to college and graduated with an engineering degree. Although he did not grow up around people who had blue-collar jobs, he found a construction job at 18 and grew inspired to get more people his age interested in the industry.
"But you're naturally pushed into these other pathways, and you don't even consider construction as an option unless you're around it all the time. But the reality is it's an amazing option. You can make great money. You can make a difference. You can support your society as you go about it. You can solve new problems every day. I talk to people that have been doing it for 40 years. They say they're still learning new things every day and there just aren't that many careers like that," he said.
Through his social media accounts, YouTube account and podcast, Witt has spent the last four years educating the public about the industry's benefits and value to society.
These jobs can provide meaning and purpose to a generation that is looking to find fulfillment in their careers, he said.
WORKER SHORTAGES HITTING THESE FIVE PROFESSIONS
"The younger generation wants a good wage. Of course, we want to be able to take care of ourselves, our families. We want purpose… We want to work alongside great people. We want to solve problems. And I think the construction industry provides what the next generation is looking for. They just don't even realize it yet," he said.
"It provides hard work, which I think is a good thing. I think human beings should work hard. It provides an amazing sense of purpose. If you're working on a road knowing that 100,000 people a day are going to be using your product to get home to their families, to get people to the hospital, to get to work or whatever it is to keep their lives moving. That's amazing. And there are so many careers out there that young people are going into that don't provide that sense of purpose."
The problem is industries like manufacturing and construction aren't attracting enough young, skilled workers to take these jobs.
While trillions of dollars have been invested into infrastructure in the past few years, the U.S. can't stay competitive or maintain our way of life without workers able to complete projects, Witt argued.
"We need over 500,000 workers in the construction industry just to meet demand. And so there's all of this talk about the infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act, all this spending on infrastructure. But the reality is we can't actually build it," he said.
"We need to build it. We need to build more manufacturing within the United States so we can sustain ourselves over the next few decades. We need to modernize our power grid, however we think best works, regardless of what we do, oil, gas, electric vehicles, solar and wind. It's all still infrastructure. At the end of the day, the roads and bridges we drive on and utilize are crumbling. We need to build [or] we're only getting more and more behind," Witt said.
Witt believes we are just beginning to see the effects of the skilled worker shortage and we will see the long-term effects on society as workers age out of the industry.
"You can't live as a human being without this industry. So it's getting to be a scary place because, again, it's not just the construction industry that's going to hurt because of this, it's the entirety of our society," he said.
Despite these concerns, Witt is hopeful that more people will move into these industries as the cultural perception of them changes.
"While the workforce challenge the construction industry is facing is real and is scary, I think it's more than possible to solve it because we have what I think the next generation's looking for," he argued. "We just haven't been able to really connect those dots yet."
According to a new survey from Thumbtack, an overwhelming majority – 87% – of skilled trade professionals say they’re happy in their jobs and would choose the same profession again if given the chance.
Seventy-three percent of young people included in the survey said they respect skilled trade jobs as a lifelong career. Forty-seven percent are reportedly interested in exploring a skilled trade profession.
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FOX Business' Kristen Altus contributed to this report.
