Brady Jolly said he never met a kid growing up who wanted to become a plumber. Over the past 10 years, he’s noticed a change.
As the CEO of Wilder-based Jolly Plumbing, his family’s namesake company, Jolly said he watched plumbing go from a career-choice afterthought to an increasingly popular option. The reason? What he calls a decreasing stigmatization around trade jobs in general.
“It was a dirty job that you didn’t really want to do,” Jolly said. “It was never anybody’s first choice. I’ve never met a kid who said they want to be a plumber when they grow up. I do think a lot of that’s changing with the institutions and the work that they’re doing.”
Northern Kentucky business leaders and educational institutions continually tout skilled trades as a viable and potentially lucrative career path for young adults. But as the stigmatization lessens, regional leaders are pushing the envelope, emphasizing that more can still be done.
On Tuesday morning, representatives from Jolly Plumbing, Campbell County Area Technology Center, Ezweiler Building Institute, Turner Construction and Gateway Community & Technical College spoke at the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce’s Eggs ‘N Issues breakfast panel. They addressed the need for more skilled trade workers across the region and increased educational resources to train prospective workers.
At this point, the United States is facing a trade labor shortage. By 2027, the country is expected to be short 550,000 plumbers, according to an analysis by John Dunham & Associates.
Many experienced trades workers are also aging into retirement. Nearly 30% of union electricians are nearing retirement, according to the National Electrical Contractors Association.
Like the rest of the country, Northern Kentucky also feels the effects of these trends. The region is facing one of the most consequential construction projects in its history: the Brent Spence Bridge Corridor project. Turner Construction’s Community & Citizenship Director Kristen Smitherman-Voltaire, the panel’s moderator, acknowledged that the scale of the project could strain the region’s workforce.
Despite this concern, Smitherman-Voltaire said that ongoing efforts to mitigate that potential strain are positive.
“We need to capitalize on that opportunity and leverage it to really put forth programming, investment and resources that will actually make a positive difference in our community long term,” she said. “I’ve seen that happen, specifically with this Brent Spence Bridge project, because of many of the ongoing collaborative efforts that have arisen out of the need to recognize that we need more talent.”
Jolly said his company has focused on expanding its workforce by recruiting women, a growing demographic in the blue-collar workforce.
In 2022, nearly 1.3 million women worked in the construction industry, or 10.8% of the total workforce, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Over the last five or six years, there’s been an influx of women in the trades, and what we’ve come to find is that women are oftentimes some of our highest performers and our best employees,” Jolly said. “The women get some of the best reviews from customers.”
On the educational side, Gateway President Fernando Figueroa said that community stakeholders must work with legislators to create a cohesive framework that supports the local economy’s needs. From his perspective, career and technical education programs in public high schools should align with those at technical colleges and universities.
“We do not have a systemic idea or notion or design for how this works, and that’s what we need to get on fast,” Figueroa said.
Another area Figueroa said needs to be improved is the recruitment of trade educators.
“One of the things that’s definitely going to have to happen is some sort of conversation as a state of how we provide incentives for employers and employer networks to work with the educators to make sure that there’s talent to teach,” he said.
Even though trade jobs are seemingly less stigmatized than once, a negative stigma remains, noted Enzweiler Building Institute’s Workforce Development Director Diane McConnell.
“We have a lot of high school students – graduates that are fresh out of high school and have a great interest in going into the trades, and they’re being deterred by family and close relatives,” McConnell said.
