Now this. A woman in Michigan is helping change the
conversation about millennials in trade jobs.
Tiffany Young originally planned to graduate college,
have a career, perhaps in either nursing or graphic design.
But then she changed her mind and became an ironworker,
just like her dad. Great story.
Tiffany and her dad Robert,
join me now. Robert, let me begin with you.
You spent 35 years in the trade.
What's your advice to young people looking to get into
the business?
I think all young people should try it.
We've had a lot of generations go to college.
We don't have enough people out in the field anymore
for all trades,
whether it be I work
Carpenter, electrician, all the all the trades are are looking
for people.
So we need a few kids to come in
and you go through the apprenticeship programs and you come
back out of a four year approach programs,
you're debt free. There's no debt involved in it.
So now your daughter is into iron working.
Did you want her to go to college?
What was your feelings on that?
I left it up to her.
She decided what she wanted to do.
I didn't push her to do anything.
I never went to college
and she went to college and tried it and didn't
like it and then kind of really surprised me that,
hey, dad, I want to be an ironworker.
I said, well, you can be whatever you want.
And had her go back to college for another year
to take up a welding course,
which accelerated her and our
ironworker program for our apprenticeship out of Local 25,
out of Detroit.
Got some great pictures on the screen of you two.
Let me bring in Tiffany.
Tiffany, what made you change your mind about college?
She's frozen.
She froze. No, Will it?
Let's get back to Dad.
Unfortunately, Dad, your daughter's video link has frozen.
But that's great. We have you here.
Are there plenty of jobs in this industry?
There's thousands and thousands of jobs nationwide for all trades
and and it's a very good income,
very good income.
You know, so many youngsters,
Robert, have been sold this bill of goods.
If you have to go to college,
if you're going to get anything done in life,
and in many cases not everyone is cut out for
college and the vocational training
is pretty impressive in this country.
But do you think more people,
more youngsters are waking up to that?
I believe they are. Back when when I was younger,
man, I was
forced, not forced but pressured in the trade schools.
I was taught that men trade schools were were good.
Yeah. Everybody in in the sense has been pressurized to
go to college and these kids are getting in some
deep debt that they can't get out of.
Yeah, it's, it's a horrible,
you know, vicious cycle. Well,
congratulations, Robert, on Tiffany. She's made a bold choice and
I hope it will pay off.
I'm sure it will. And thank you for joining.
Unfortunately, we couldn't talk to her because we lost our
video link.
But thank you so much for chatting with us today.
Very interesting stuff. Thank
you.