Skilled Trades worker shortage discussion on the Work in Progress podcast
Skilled Trades worker shortage discussion on the Work in Progress podcast

Here’s what employers can do about the shortage of skilled trade workers

Fire Up Your Career: A conversation with Brooke Weddle, senior partner, McKinsey & Company
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Skilled trade workers are in big demand and short supply and it just might be a career pathway you should consider. WorkingNation and Scripps News have partnered on a new series, Fire Up Your Career, to explore the types of jobs available, what employers are doing to attract talent, and how you can get the skills needed for these good-paying jobs popping up all across the country. Read the article and listen to the podcast, then watch the video below of WorkingNation on Scripps News discussing what’s driving the demand and creating new job opportunities in the skilled trades.

In this episode of Work in Progress, we’re talking about the shortage of skilled trade workers and what employers can do about it. I am joined by Brooke Weddle, McKinsey & Company senior partner and co-author of the McKinsey report Tradespeople Wanted: The Need for Critical Trade Skills in the U.S.

The country is facing a hiring crunch for skilled workers such as carpenters, electricians, welders, and plumbers. What’s behind the critical demand for talent in the trades? Weddle says the shortage is not new, but the demand has skyrocketed over the past few years.

“That comes from things like the bipartisan infrastructure law. It comes from the energy transition. It comes from infrastructure investments beyond the Biden bipartisan infrastructure law. We see things like the CHIPS Act,” she explains.

“Two important supply-side trends are decreasing the number of skilled laborers in the U.S. workforce: the aging U.S. population and too few younger people entering the trades.” according to the report.

Weddle adds, “We are not seeing enough new entrants into those skilled trade roles, so thus the gap that we observe. It’s troubling because it’s getting in the way of productivity and performance of a lot of organizations.”

The report estimates that cost of the worker shortage to U.S. companies is over $5 billion. “We’re not talking about small numbers here. And having worked with many industrial manufacturing companies that are employing these skilled trades, I can tell you that this is not a HR topic. This is a CEO topic,” Weddle tells me in the podcast.

“If you listen to any earnings call of a large industrial company in the past 12, 24 months, I would be hard-pressed to find one that is not talking about workforce issues, whether it’s acquiring that talent or retaining that talent or making that talent more productive,” she says.

The report finds that the demand for workers in the skilled trades is only going to increase based on McKinsey’s analysis on the data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and talking with employers.

Weddle and I discuss some ideas of how employers can attract and retain new workers to fill current and future roles, including working locally with a variety of partners.

“So involving others in the community, whether those are economic development organizations, workforce councils. There is obviously the big role to play on the educational provider side. As we know, that is certainly not just higher ed, but it is community colleges. It is vocational schools.

“One of the things that we’ve seen is that when you’re orchestrating and integrating at this regional level, then you’re able to much more quickly match what are the skills and goals we need to how do we build the workforce that is required?

“I would say failure is not an option. We must be optimistic, but we must be smart optimists. We need to find new innovative ways to work together,” Weddle tells me.

We go deeper into specific examples of how this regional partner approach is getting results. We also talk about some of the reasons younger adults might not want to join the skilled trades and how employers can address those issues to attract a new generation of workers.

You can listen to the entire conversation here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can read the McKinsey & Company Tradespeople Wanted report here.

Fire Up Your Career: The Skilled Trades

All this week, WorkingNation and our partner Scripps News will continue to explore the opportunities in the skilled trades, what’s driving the demand for workers, and programs that are helping to fill the worker shortfall.

I joined Scripps News’ Morning Rush this morning to discuss today’s podcast.

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What is behind the critical demand for skilled trade workers in America? Carpenters, electricians, and plumbers are among the many skilled positions companies need to fill in 2024, but many are struggling to appeal to a new and younger demographic. WorkingNation’s Ramona Schindelheim breaks down the opportunities available in these industries.

Tune into Scripps News each morning at 9:45 am ET to hear from our WorkingNation team as part of our Fire Up Your Career special coverage.

You can also find more of our ongoing WorkingNation coverage on the skilled trades here on our website.

Episode 330: Brooke Weddle, senior partner, McKinsey & Company
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, editor-in-chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4
Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode here
Work in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.