Posted on 12/17/2025 8:20:47 AM PST by WhiteHatBobby0701
The skilled trades workforce, critical to keeping the country's infrastructure and economy running, is rapidly declining.
While many companies are working to address the shortage, General Motors has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build its own pipeline of future workers.
Over the past five years alone, the automaker has invested more than $242 million in its skilled trades apprenticeship program, which is geared toward training the next generation of skilled trade professionals with a combination of classroom instruction and thousands of hours of hands-on experience at a GM facility, Michael Trevorrow, GM's senior vice president of global manufacturing, told FOX Business.
Apprentices will go through up to 672 hours of related technical instruction in a classroom setting and approximately 7,920 hours of on-the-job training with an assigned qualified skilled trades person. Focus areas of the program include a diemaker, electrician, experimental assembler inspector, experimental laboratory paint technician, millwright, metal model maker, wood model maker, pattern maker, pipefitter, toolmaker and machine repairer.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxbusiness.com ...
Bob Lutz was right. Car guys are better than bean counters.
Rapidly declining? It was declining by design. Outsourcing any every job overseas and then every job was to be corporate adult day care job like HR, DEI, “health care policy” (not actual medicine), and government, etc.
Declining by design over the past 60 years.
Agreed! A skilled auto mechanic is worth 1,000 lawyers. If he (or she) is honest as well as competent, he’s worth his weight in gold. This goes for all skilled blue-collar workers — plumbers, electricians, roofers, etc. Far too many young adults are going to college.
Sorry, but the way GM screwed Impala owners in 2008 was enough to make me never trust GM again.
missing the point: The issue isn’t a lack of education, the issue is mechanics are not paid a fair wage due to the ridiculous flat-rate system being broken. Cars are now too complicated and take too much time to repair and warranty work is not paid at the full rate as non-warranty work. Most mechanics also have to cover the cost of their education, certifications, and tools and it takes years for them to recoup that cost. It just isn’t worth the cost for entry couoled with the low wages to be a franchise dealer mechanic. That is why many mechanics are moving to other trades such as electrical abd HVAC. The real solution is pay a good hourly wage and benefits and eliminate the flat-rate system.
The "college education" they're getting doesn't even meet the standards of a high school 100 years ago.
And for what it's worth, you had a better chance of getting into an apprenticeship program if you were a relative of a UAW union official.
like, who don't know that.
Gm getting in bed with obama was enough for me. Before that I had 7 gm vehicles in a row and fairly satisfied......other than my Jeep it’s been imports ever since and will more than likely stay that way for the foreseeable future.
Maybe young men are waking up about this. A local 2-year tech school (85% male) set an enrollment record this year. Its top majors are auto repair, diesel tech, electrical tech and HVAC. The 15% female population is mostly in its nursing programs. Meanwhile, our local state university’s enrollment has dropped more than 50% in the last 15 years, AND it’s demographics this year reflect a general male flight from colleges - 62% female/38% male.
The Fortune 100 company I worked for thought it would impress the analysts to move many skilled trades jobs offshore that could be - things like mold, die, and toolmaking. Only to realize the quality was crap and quickly re-instated apprenticeship programs in the US.
“Far too many young adults are going to college.”
My sister taught math to middle- and high-schoolers for 45 years, the last 10 in downtown Baltimore at a magnet school. The last school was almost all black with some poor Appalachian mountain kids. Their goal was to get every kid into college regardless of the kid’s interest, ability or aptitude. It turned out exactly as you would expect. Maybe 15% of the kids were genuinely college material. The others struggled, were passed through grades without earning the promotion, the colleges let them in, remedial courses were required, some got college degrees handed to them and many dropped out. It was a disaster.
But steady as she goes! The educational establishment will not recognize failure and make course corrections. Everybody MUST go to college.
So companies like GM have to create these programs.
There are really excellent vo-tech programs at North Idaho College near us.
Ford (I guess maybe other industries did too!) in the early days had educational programs for its workers. I guess it’s time to return to that
This job should start with shop classes in Jr. and Sr. High Schools...with a direct pipeline to the trade union apprenticeship programs.
AT LEAST half of kids should not aspire to college. It’ll do nothing for them but put them in debt.
As an example I have a cousin that can’t add 2 + 2 and can barely read the newspaper. But he has the finest touch as a cabinet maker. He literally creates art with whatever woodworking job he touches. He can also rebuild any motor, Caterpillar diesel, or your Subaru.
“This goes for all skilled blue-collar workers — plumbers, electricians, roofers, etc.”
I’ve seen plenty of American plumbers and electricians. Roofers not so much, actually only one time in recent years.
I saw a group of Black men roofing a house and took a double take because it’s so abnormal to see Americans doing that job.
To be fair Americans wouldn’t get hired in the first place except the owner of that roofing company was himself Black.
(Yes, I have heard at least four foreign born supervisors who openly say they don’t hire Americans, Black or White.)
would tend to indicate that government trade schools aren’t doing a good job ...
The UAW should take in hourly-paid contract employee CAD modelers and drafters who are on the job among corporate direct-hires at the same job classification. It seems odd that arrangements like that haven’t already been made.
Colleges are hostile to men.
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