How North Bay construction firms are trying to recruit reluctant younger workers
Garrett Anken enjoys his career and finds it rewarding. But he’s made choices that many of his Gen Z peers didn’t.
Anken, 24, works as an apprentice plumber at Sonoma-based Peterson Mechanical, a heating, ventilating, and air conditioning contractor that serves Napa, Marin, Solano and four other Bay Area counties.
“I enjoy being hands on and seeing something positive come out of it because we’re essentially helping (people),” Anken said. “When we go to hospitals and we're running water lines, or gas lines, or the oxygen lines that people are using, it's helpful to them. So it’s almost like a reward at the end. I get a good feeling afterwards.”
But Anken’s interest in the skilled trades isn’t common these days among Gen Z workers (those born between 1997 and 2012) nor the younger end of the millennial set who were born between 1981 and 1996.
The reasons seem to be attached to a long-held stigma that white-collar professions are preferable to blue-collar careers. That messaging is driven by a number of factors that include little advertising for careers in the skilled trades; a lack of exposure for young workers who didn’t grow up in that environment; and parental pressure to get a four-year college degree.
“A lot of people go to a four-year school and then come out in debt,” Anken said. “You're making money as you're going to school, and you get full benefits.”
Anken is a member of UA Local 38 Plumbers, Steamfitters & HVAC/Refrigeration, which currently represents approximately 2,500 members in San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties, according to its website.
More money, more opportunities
The theory that chasing a college degree gives students a leg up to enter the white-collar working world better off than blue-collar professionals isn’t necessarily true, as one Sonoma County business leader found out.
Amy Christopherson Bolton, president of Christopherson Builders, made $48,000 a year at her first job coming out of grad school with a master’s degree in the sciences. She thought that was a pretty good starting salary.
“The people I knew who became plumbers and (other trades) were making $65,000 and $70,000 a year,” she said. “So all those years I spent in school started off at a way lower price point.
“Another thing about the trades is that it provides a really nice kind of low-barrier-to-entry opportunity to become your own boss, to start your own business,” Bolton added. “If you are working in a typical white-collar profession, to start your own business is this huge, daunting, expensive task.”
Fruits of his labor
Zach Brandner, president and CEO of Peterson Mechanical, was raised in what is largely a family business, working in the field from an early age before leaving the company to go the suit-and-tie route and become a design engineer.
But life away from construction job sites wasn’t for him.
“From the engineering architecture standpoint, you put these buildings and plans on paper and then they leave your office,” he said. “And you have no idea whether they got built or what it looks like.”
Brandner returned to Peterson 15 years ago in an administrative role, which also required him to sometimes be out in the field.
“I wanted more interaction and I wanted to see the tangible results of what I was doing,” he said.
Last summer, Brandner took over as president and CEO.
Even though Brandner is now running the company, he continues to know firsthand what is happening in the field and still visits job sites. He said the construction industry and its culture is where he feels most comfortable.
“I think it's because I was raised in it,” he said. “It goes back to that family theme.”
These days, Brandner said he sees little interest in careers in the trades among younger workers if they didn’t grow up in that environment.
“It was sort of brewing with the millennials and now it's continuing on with Gen Z,” Brandner said. “It just seems to get overlooked. College is just so well-advertised as where you go to make a good living.”
Research-driven solutions
Why someone decides to choose a four-year college degree over the trades is something Peter Tateishi, CEO of the Sacramento-based California arm of the Associated General Contractors advocacy group, is charged with finding out.
“What we're seeing as the number one barrier to Gen Z are the influencers around them, which means, at this point, millennials and Gen X,” Tateishi said, “and even boomer parents who are still of the mindset that a four-year degree needs to be the direction for their children to have a healthy, sustainable life.”