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What’s being done to plug the electricians skills gap?

Written by Posted On Saturday, 28 September 2019 02:31
The construction industries will be short of around 60,000 electricians by 2026 The construction industries will be short of around 60,000 electricians by 2026 Image courtesy of https://www.aspect.co.uk/trades/electrics/

By 2026, there will be 60,000 too few electricians working in the United States, according to new research published in June 2019 by the tool manufacturer Ideal Industries. Many experts put this down to a multi-generational focus on bachelors degrees. With so many people believing that a college education is the only route to a well-paid career, thousands of would-be skilled tradespeople have been lost to the industry.

 There’s an irony to this situation that will amuse those who skipped college to pursue a career as a contractor; due to the shortage of skills many electricians are set to command annual salaries in the hundreds of thousands. It’s simple economics. There is more demand than supply for electricians, so the good ones can charge a premium.

Additionally, those that elected to pursue a skilled trade instead of an academic career will be free of the enormous levels of student debt that follows graduates around. Estimates put the collective student debt burden at around half a trillion dollars, shared between 44 million families. 

Back in 2017, the state of California spent $6 million on advertising, in an attempt to improve perceptions of vocational careers. And in 2019 Lowe’s, the home improvement giant, launched a campaign aimed at steering talented youngsters into skilled trade careers. There’s an obvious appetite among the business community to plug the skills gap before it becomes a major problem.

It’s not just an issue in the United States either. The United Kingdom has a similar skills gap. Although recent research over there shows that there may be a natural rebalancing of the skills economy, as young graduates grasp the financial opportunities on offer by skipping further education and training for a trade instead.

Back in the summer of 2019, when UK high school students received their final grades (referred to as A-levels), a curious trend emerged. Interest in skilled trades spiked on the very day students, theoretically at least, were supposed to be confirming their college places and planning for their academic careers.

Researchers at property maintenance company Aspect were tracking Google search data to see what sort of searches were being made on the day the grades were published. They detected a spike in a range of search queries that pointed to high levels of interest among students in skipping college and taking up a skilled trade instead. 

Google search traffic for terms like “electrician training near me” more than doubled, pointing to an obvious appetite among school-leavers for taking on these sort of careers. Queries that signalled intent to pursue a long term career, such as “electrician salary” more than doubled on the day the grades were released too, compared to the day before. 

Nick Bizley, director of operations at Aspect, who conducted the Google Trends analysis says: “There’s currently a skills gap in the construction sector, so it’s encouraging to see that people are interested in apprenticeships and training in the skilled trades. It’s interesting too that there appears to be a spike in interest in and around A-Level results day. 

“This suggests that students are exploring their options more widely, which is always a good sign. If young people are taking A-levels and then considering an apprenticeship or vocational training, they’re equipping themselves for a rewarding and very worthy career. Good for them.”

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Curt S Pearson

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