Story by Elizabeth Egan
Art by Emily Pack
John Seaman always knew the merits of construction work.
Growing up in western North Carolina, Seaman worked alongside his dad, who worked in the building industry, took up jobs in the evenings and weekends.
Despite what he had witnessed with his eyes and felt with his hands, people advised him not to follow the same path as his dad.
“I was told that if I didn’t go to college and get a degree that I was going to have to live breaking my back for the rest of my life and never be able to have any kind of retirement or financial freedom,” Seaman said.
He took their advice and went to college and got a degree. But, instead of success, he felt he had ended up with the opposite — a career in business that he did not see any way to excel in and also was not satisfied with the money he was making.
“I decided I wanted to come back and just work with my hands,” he said.
Now, Seaman is the owner of Asheville-based development company JC Property Professionals, multiple other LLCs and several real estate properties, and has been featured in Forbes and other magazines. Seaman has become a champion of his career path — one that has been rapidly losing workers.
According to the publication Construction Dive, the construction industry alone is facing a gap of about half a million workers.
And this is not a problem isolated to the construction industry.
Skilled industries such as manufacturing, plumbing, electricians and trades across the board are facing worker shortages — young workers, specifically. In January, NPR reported that the application rate for young people for technical jobs — such as plumbing, building and electrical work — dropped 49% from 2020 to 2022.
The cause? The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic could be at play. The Hechinger report found that students enrolled in two-year vocational programs fell 18% in the fall of 2022 from the fall of 2019.
To Seaman, this is a trend that is many years in the making.
He said that about 10 to 15 years ago, the school system encouraged students to attend a four-year college and pushed the idea that if they did not they would have the opportunity to have successful careers.
“And so the blue-collar industry in particular was looked down on very heavily because of that.”
Four-year degree mindset
The societal push for high-school graduates to attend college that Seaman describes is not only his own observation — it’s backed up by data. According to data from the Pew Research Center. Generation Z is already on the path to becoming the most-educated generation. Among people ages 18 to 21 who were no longer in high school in 2018, 57% were enrolled in a two- or four-year college program. This is compared to 52% of the same demographic in 2003 and 43% in 1987.
“A guy with a degree can make a whole lot less money than a guy with no degree that never went to school that doesn’t even have a GED because they have a skill set that they do with their hands,” Seaman said.
‘Staff it up’
Jordan Davis, recruiting coordinator for JC Property Professionals, has been struggling to find applicants to fill the company’s positions. For her, the most difficult part is finding candidates who are willing to follow through with the company’s interview processes.
Davis said after someone submits an application, she will send them a Google Form asking the applicant further questions about their skills.
“We have a really hard time getting people to fill out that assessment,” she said. “We really see that they’re not willing to give resumes either.”
Phil Mintz, executive director of Industry Expansion Solutions at North Carolina State University, said the manufacturing industry in North Carolina is also facing the same workforce challenges.
“Simply because, it just really hasn’t been an attractive workplace for a long time,” he said. “But, now, there’s a lot of effort to try and staff it up because we’re making more and more things here in the States.”
Mintz emphasized that the ongoing shortage of manufacturing workforce has raised concerns that new manufacturing plants entering North Carolina will not be able to fill all their positions.
Community colleges and other solutions
With these problems, there are a variety of proposed solutions on how to bring more young people and workers in general into trade industries.
Mintz said one of the primary models manufacturing organizations are using to combat their labor shortage is apprenticeships after high school.
He said apprenticeship programs give people the opportunity to gain experience working in a favorty as well as learn in a community college setting.
Apprenticeship Blue Ridge, housed in the Blue Ridge Community College in western North Carolina, is one of these programs. Kelli Stewart, the school’s apprenitceship coordinator, said in an email that its apprenticeships range from one to four years and result in a journeyman certificate from both the United States and North Carolina Departments of Labor. Apprentices attend class one day a week and work with an employer the remaining days, while being paid for a full 40-hour work week, she said.
“Through the support of our College, these apprentices are able to become financially independent, and many begin their careers at a young age,” Stewart said.
Really, manufacturers are “looking everywhere,” to find employees, Mintz said.
A further challenge is that manufacturing is starting to become more high-tech, so, in the words of Mintz, “manufacturers need thinkers and not just doers.”
Where Industry Expansion Solutions comes in is more at a professional development level than at the technical level. Mintz said they run the North Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership and a workforce development program, which works closely with the community college system.
“So what we do, as a part of our program, is ensure that manufacturers that we are engaged with, know about these programs, and have a connection to the business person at the community college, so they can help them, set up a training program for new employees or programs that can help them expand knowledge of their existing employees,” he said.
For Seaman, his company strives to create and display a “great culture,” because “nobody wants to go to work anywhere that they’re going to be miserable at.” He said while the company also is competitive with pay and benefits, there is not one thing that can fix the problem on its own.
“I think that it’s multiple different things that you have to constantly work on, constantly be focused on that will help keep folks and help attract more folks,” he said.
Stewart has seen signs that the attitudes around trade careers may be starting to shift.
“In our College’s service area, we have seen an increase in people entering trade industries because the high-demand for these services is driving up wages,” she said. “The wisdom that a trade can provide a good life with good wages and secure employment has begun to trickle down from older to younger generations; from grandparents, to parents and then to their children.”
The bottom line, according to Mintz? Jobs are evolving and the workforce needs to evolve with them.
“Just traditional or just know how of individuals is just not enough to take on some of these new positions,” he said.
