Yes, And: The Trades Need a Narrative Shift Too

This week, BlackRock, Google, Ford, and Carhartt announced a partnership geared toward closing the skilled trades workforce gap in the United States.

These four companies are coming together to form the Alliance for America's Skilled Trades, with the goal of filling the roughly 2.1 million skilled trades positions that communities across the country will need over the next several years. Notably, the Alliance isn't stopping at these four. They've said they want to bring in education and nonprofit partners to expand the effort. That's the piece I want to talk about.

I'm hopeful this will turn the tide on how skilled trades are perceived in our country. I'm looking at this through the lens of my own experiences growing up in northeast Ohio, and through the work we've been doing at Rhodes Branding in this space. Our partnership with folks like the Association for Career and Technical Education (CTE), along with the hundreds of school district partners we've worked with, has taught me a few things about how students view CTE and the trades. And those students are the ones expected to fill a good chunk of those 2.1 million positions.

 First, we need to retire the notion that you're a failure with zero chance of succeeding in life if your journey doesn't include four years on a college campus somewhere. This is the one that bothers me the most, having spent the vast majority of my career inside the higher education machine. Higher education has its place, and I'll include myself and my own family in that. It's one option. But it's been painted as the only viable path to a happy and fulfilling life. In my opinion, that framing has done real harm to this country.

Second, there's a giant misconception about what you actually do in CTE classes in 2026. Many current parents think enrolling their child in CTE is the same experience as the vo-tech shop or home-ec class they took back in the 80s or 90s. I know some of the fashion choices from those eras are coming back. But the classes are not what you remember. If you haven't stepped foot inside a career center or a CTE-focused high school lately, you should consider taking a tour. Even for someone like me who does this every day for a living, it's mindblowing. And seeing students beam with pride as they show off something they built in a lab or workshop is hard to top.

Lastly, and this is less a misconception than a missed opportunity, there needs to be better alignment between education and industry in every community. My team facilitated our CLNA Strategy Lab in several communities this past fall, bringing educators, business leaders, community members, students, and parents together to talk through the challenges and build solutions for aligning these groups. I came away from every one of them optimistic that a shift is underway, though there's still much work to be done.

I'm hearing that same thing in every corner of the country. The tailwinds behind CTE and the trades are real. My hope is that we capitalize on the moment and that initiatives like the Alliance for America's Skilled Trades succeed.

The funding and momentum from the Alliance are exactly what’s needed right now. The next layer is making sure the next generation actually sees themselves in these careers. That's the part I'm excited to help with.