Some six-figure trade jobs are sitting empty.

ISSUE #40 • FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2026 • 5 MIN READ

Friday. Thanks for spending another workweek with Still Monday. Forward this one to the person who was told the only respectable career path involved a laptop, a degree and eventually learning what “circle back” means.

Today's labor shortage has a strange feature: some of the jobs employers cannot fill are jobs that can pay very well and are difficult to automate from a desk.

The obstacle may be less about the work than the story we tell about the work.

Home Builders Institute CEO Ed Brady has been warning that skilled trades such as plumbing, electrical work and HVAC face a deep labor shortage. He has said the sector has roughly 300,000 unfilled jobs and that some paths can reach six-figure incomes, including opportunities for workers to build their own businesses. Home Builders Institute

A broader report on America's skilled trades projects roughly 1.7 million openings a year through 2035. Fortune reported that only about 55 people are being trained for every 100 jobs expected to open, while retirement continues to pull experienced workers out of the system. Fortune

The obvious explanation would be pay. That is not the whole story.

For years, schools and families treated the four-year degree as the default marker of upward mobility. Trades were often presented as the fallback. Meanwhile, many office jobs became more competitive, entry-level hiring became harder and the cost of college kept making the first paycheck carry more baggage.

The labor market is now sending an awkward signal. Some crowded career lanes have enormous status and weak hiring. Some less glamorous lanes have employers asking where everybody went.

That does not mean every teenager should become an electrician. It means career advice should be based on economics rather than prestige.

Look at training time, debt required to enter, starting pay, earnings after five years, geographic demand, physical demands, schedule control, whether the skill can become a business, and whether technology makes the work more valuable or easier to replace.

A job title is a terrible spreadsheet.

There is also a management lesson. Employers cannot complain about talent shortages while treating workforce development as somebody else's problem. The companies that need skilled workers may have to participate in training, apprenticeships, high-school partnerships and clearer career pathways.

You cannot spend twenty years telling young people a job is second-class and then act surprised when the application pile is empty.

The shortage combines retirements with too few new entrants. Fortune's coverage of the trades report describes a simple imbalance: experienced workers are leaving faster than new workers are replacing them.

The same report notes that only about half of people who start many training programs finish, while high-quality apprenticeship programs can post much stronger completion rates. Creating access is only the first step.

HBI says the U.S. construction industry needs hundreds of thousands of new workers and that shortages are already delaying projects and raising costs. The problem shows up in housing prices long before it shows up in a LinkedIn trend report.

When evaluating a career path, make a five-year table with training cost, debt, expected earnings, time to competence, local demand and upside from specialization or ownership. Do it for the prestigious option and the supposedly boring one.

A career decision gets clearer when the adjectives disappear and the numbers arrive.

A career with lower training cost and faster entry into paid work can create a very different five-year financial picture than one with higher tuition and delayed earnings. A trade can also carry physical risk, cyclical demand and location constraints.

The point is not that one path always wins. It is that status should not be allowed to do the math.

PARENT: You need a respectable career.

STUDENT: The electrician says I can make six figures.

PARENT: But what about college?

STUDENT: The college says I can owe six figures.

PARENT: Please stop using numbers.

A labor shortage can be a skills problem. It can also be a reputation problem with payroll attached.

Vote below and tell us whether schools and employers do enough to explain non-college career paths, or whether everybody discovers them after already choosing something else.

Technically Friday. Emotionally checking the hourly rate.

— The Still Monday Desk