Social media opens a window to traditional trades for young workers

In 2023, after he was captivated by a video showing a day in the life of a group of trainees scaling a lattice tower for the first time, Dylan Healy moved from New York to Georgia with some friends to attend the Southeast Lineman Training Center.

“We’d rewatch that video over and over because it got us excited to go to trade school,” said Healy, 20.

Their love of that clip prompted a friend to suggest Healy document his first day of trade school on TikTok. He was stunned when it went viral. It had no music or editing, just snippets of his day: Eating a Clif bar breakfast and reading the Bible, lacing up his boots and chatting before his first class, going to a bonfire with other lineman in training, and capping off the day with some Grand Theft Auto.

Healy has been documenting his experiences ever since, from sunrise drives to the unlacing of his boots at the end of the day. And he’s constantly fielding questions about his TikTok feed, such as “How did you do it?” “Did you have to move from home?” “Will I have to travel?”

Social media is increasingly becoming a destination for a new generation to learn about skilled trades—at a time when many have grown skeptical about the cost of college and the promise of white-collar jobs. These posts offer authentic insight as workers talk openly about everything from their favorite workwear to safety and payday routines.

The exposure is also changing the game for trade schools and employers in such industries as manufacturing and construction, which have long struggled to attract workers. Now, some are evolving their recruiting tactics by wading into content creation themselves after decades of relying largely on word of mouth.

Trade school enrollment, which had been on a steady decline before the pandemic, has been steadily rising: The share of people aged 17 to 21 with two-year vocational degrees in 2024 hit the highest level ever since data was collected starting in 1992, and has roughly doubled since 2000, according to a Washington Post analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey.

The reversal in trade school enrollment comes as many younger Americans grow disillusioned with the notion that colleges and universities offer a guaranteed pathway to a successful, stable future, according to Daniel Zhao, lead economist at Glassdoor.

Among younger workers, there’s sharp anxiety about “whether college is still as valuable,” Zhao said, adding that their uncertainty is backed by data showing rising unemployment among college-aged workers compared with other age groups. There are “many college grads saddled with student debt who don’t feel like their degree has gotten them into a higher paying job or a stable career,” he added.

In contrast, “the trades can be attractive as an avenue to entrepreneurship,” which has exploded since the pandemic and is seen as particularly desirable for young workers, Zhao said, noting they’re also more willing to experiment with new ways to earn income.

“Part of the appeal of the trades is the ability to be your own boss and set your own hours,” he said.

A window on growing fields

Despite growing interest in the trades, industries such as construction and manufacturing remain short of workers and are under acute pressure to keep reaching out to new populations, according to Greg Sizemore of Associated Builders and Contractors, or ABC, a national trade association with more than 23,000 members.

Long racked by labor shortages, the construction industry needs roughly 440,000 workers to complete ongoing projects this year, said Sizemore, ABC’s vice president of health, safety, environment and workforce development. And the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is shrinking the supply of workers further; more than 1.6 million foreign-born workers have left the workforce since March, according to July jobs data.

Lately, construction and other skilled trades have become more attractive to young workers because they’re less exposed to artificial intelligence, and “we have a model that allows them to earn while they learn,” according to Sizemore.

“But we can’t just build it and expect them to come,” he said. “We have to tell them what we’re building.”

For the past few years, he acknowledged, it’s been workers who have been the most effective spokespeople for construction, particularly through organic content on social media, because it reaches people “within their personal sphere of influence.”

“When I see a young person out there proud to be in the trades … I immediately look at who they’re talking to,” Sizemore said. “Because when they hear it from their peers, it does move the needle for people looking at our industry.”

Having struggled to find a career that was a good fit for her after high school, Hunter, 26, signed on for a pipe-fitting apprenticeship several years ago, at a time when there was “a big push for getting women into the trades.”

She wishes she had known earlier in life that this was an option. So the past few years, she has been documenting her professional life as a welder in Michigan alongside her personal one in hopes that others will consider the trades. (She no longer uses her last name on social media because she has faced online harassment, and she spoke on the condition that it not be used for that reason.)

Her posts have titles like “Skip college, learn a skilled trade,” “How it feels to go to a new jobsite as a woman” and “What cleaning out your car is like when you’re a welder,” in which she smiles while piling up a stack of welding caps in her driver’s seat.

Commenters, especially younger women, ask for advice about vocational schools, welding techniques, finding entry-level jobs and life as a woman in the trades. There are far more female tradeswomen making content now than when Hunter started out, she said, although it’s still rare for her to encounter other women out in the field.

“I do think women are more likely to post,” Hunter said. “We’re looking for that community, we’re looking for that support, we’re looking for those shared experiences.”

Changing the game

At Atomic Enrollment, an advertising company working with trade and vocational schools that train technicians for wind and solar equipment; cellphone towers; heating and air conditioning and cosmetology, social media advertising is the company’s “bread and butter,” said chief marketing officer Tom Noh. Video is particularly powerful, he added.

When Atomic started working in the space eight years ago, trade schools were in the depths of an enrollment crisis after decades of pressure drove young workers toward white-collar roles in fields such as finance and technology, Noh explained.

Back then, career fairs and word of mouth were the dominant recruiting techniques, which “used to work for people over 35, but people under 30 aren’t using those channels,” Noh said. “Our schools used to go recruit on high school campuses, and it’d just be crickets.”

But in the pandemic’s wake, a proliferation of TikTok posts took off, featuring both white-collar and blue-collar workers documenting their daily routines and talking frankly about pay. Suddenly, young people stumbling upon these posts from workers in the skilled trades had a window into life on construction sites, in oil fields, atop wind turbines and power lines.

The paradox is that “in theory, trade schools need to be creating that content, but it’s the graduates making it,” Noh said.

Noh helps trade schools to replicate this by partnering with graduates-turned-influencers to make content, or hiring actors and producing short-form video ads emulating them for TikTok and Instagram. For some of Atomic’s clients, as much as 80 percent of their students discover them through social media, Noh said.

But it’s been tough for Noh to convince some clients that social media is worth the effort because many trade schools are run by baby boomers who “can’t fathom putting a budget internally toward someone creating content all day,” he said.

For Grant Johnston, vice president of business development at Airstreams Renewables, a vocational training school specializing in energy and hazardous-duty industrial sectors, social media is now “invaluable” in recruiting students.

Houston-based Airstreams works mainly with veterans, who the company struggled to reach in the past, Johnston said. Before the pandemic, Johnston used to go to about 100 career fairs a year, with mixed results. He tried to run some Google ads by himself at one point but “failed miserably.”

Now, with social media, “you can go after certain populations,” Johnston explained, adding that Airstreams has had success with video content on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. “We’re reaching veterans, people who want to be outside, people who want to work with their hands.”

Ryan Odendahl, president and CEO of Kwest Group, an Ohio-based heavy civil and industrial contractor, said his company has seen an influx of interest from young workers, not only in technical roles but also office jobs like project manager and project coordinator. Along with the ongoing cultural shift around work that began with the pandemic, Odendahl attributed that growth to meeting more potential workers where they are.

“We’ve realized the best way to get them is when they’re scrolling social media,” Odendahl said, adding that it has “changed the game” in the past few years.

The company puts out short-form videos on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram that show “a quick burst of what it looks like to work at Kwest”—not unlike the ones resonating on TikTok, which Kwest has yet to wade into. Upcoming Kwest releases will cover a day in the life of a project manager and a concrete finisher, he said.

“We really like this geo-fenced, short-snippet, get-their-attention and engage them type of thing,” Odendahl said. “Who would have thought we’d be spending this much time on social media?”