This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Model!
I took my kids to the 4th USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, DC two weekends ago. Imagine my surprise when I came upon a booth for BYF or Build Your Future. In between all the booths for 3D printers (I swear I saw at least 12 and I barely saw a portion of the entire festival) and STEM summer camps here was this booth based on getting young people excited about careers in construction. At first I was curious as to why they were there but then I realized that the construction business is highly technical. It isn’t just about brute strength anymore. Today’s construction workers may be using a drone to do the site survey or they might use one of those 3D printers to construct a model of the projected building.
So what does all of this mean for the upcoming generation? First of all, the Harvard Graduate School of Education predicts that fields like construction and manufacturing will provide nearly 8 million job openings, 2.7 million of which will require a post-secondary credential by 2018. Young adults today are graduating college with more student-loan debt than ever before. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, 2015 graduates had on average about $35,000 in student-loan debt. The average starting salary for a graduate with a bachelor’s degree in 2015 was $50,651. The construction field is wide and varied but we will take a deeper a look at just one of the fields.
Compare a journeyman electrician to the college graduate. The average apprentice will make $34,841. After a four year apprenticeship, the first-year journeyman electrician will make an average of $42,000. The college graduate will graduate with $35,000 in debt and only be making about $50,000. Comparatively, after four years the electrician will be making $42,000/year with no debt and will have enjoyed earning over $100,000 over the past four years instead of accruing debt.
Construction work is still looked down upon by some but I think that it is worth a deeper look for those in high school or recent graduates or even those looking for a career change.
photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/65265630@N03/20592985363">3D printing, IFA 2015</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(license)</a>