Mike Rowe: “For every five tradespeople that retire this year, two replace them.”
“It’s been that way for 12 years.”
“I don’t need to be a mathematician, this is bad arithmetic.”
“7.2 million able-bodied men today, in their prime working years, are not only unemployed … they’re not even looking.”
“What are they doing?”
“2,000 hours a year, on average, on screens.”
“I got a call from a company called BlueForge Alliance … in charge of something called the maritime industrial base.”
“The maritime industrial base consists of 15,000 individual companies, all of whom are tasked with delivering thermonuclear-powered submarines to the US Navy—three a year, two Virginia-class, one Columbia.”
“BlueForge Alliance calls me and they say, we need to hire some tradespeople, and we were wondering if you and your foundation could help.”
“I said, I’ll try, as you probably learned, it’s pretty skinny out there … how many do you need?”
“They said 100,000.”
“100,000 tradespeople for one industry that most people don’t even think about.”
“They said, we’ve looked everywhere … do you know where they are?”
“I said, yeah I do, they’re in the eighth grade.”
“That’s 100,000 building submarines. There’s 80,000 in the automotive industry alone for technicians. Right now … 80,000 openings.”
“You start to go down the list and you begin to realize our workforce is wildly out of balance.”
