People don’t realize how valuable the trades are, and how unbelievable they can be as both jobs and careers. There are seven reasons more people should seriously consider them.

Job satisfaction in the skilled trades is through the roof.

When you work in the trades, every day you’re actually accomplishing something. You’re not just a cog in a corporate machine. You’re going out, helping people, solving real problems, and getting a sense of satisfaction and completion every single day.

You can actually see what you accomplished.

That matters. A lot.

When I think about how much money someone can make in a career, I think about two things: the floor and the ceiling.

In the skilled trades, both can be really high.

First, there’s the debt. If you go through an apprenticeship, you can enter the skilled trades with literally no college debt. Instead of spending years paying to learn, you can actually get paid while you learn.

Then there’s the floor. There’s such a shortage of skilled tradespeople that you can make good money in many of these jobs even relatively early in your career.

And then there’s the ceiling.

The ceiling is incredibly high. I know people who never went to college and now run $100 million-plus companies in the skilled trades.

There really isn’t a limit to how far you can go.

Later we'll talk about how to guarantee your highest earning potential.

If you’ve ever wanted to start your own business, the trades are an unbelievable way to do it.

There are entrepreneurs being created in the trades every day.

You can learn a valuable skill, become great at it, build relationships with customers, and eventually go out on your own.

That gives you the opportunity for freedom, autonomy, independence, and the ability to have a lot more control over your time and your career.

If you want to be an entrepreneur someday, the trades can be a great path.

A lot of people simply aren’t built to sit at a desk staring at a computer for eight or ten hours a day.

In many skilled trades, you get to move. You get to use your hands. You get to use your body. Sometimes you get to work outside.

Your work is physical and tangible instead of spending your entire day sitting behind a screen.

For a lot of people, that’s a much better way to spend their life.

Think about the coolest things humans have built.

Massive buildings. Bridges. Dams. Museums. The Statue of Liberty.

Basically every massive, legendary thing in the physical world was built by tradespeople.

And if you work in the trades, you can be part of building things like that.

There’s something pretty incredible about walking around years later with your kids, your grandkids, or even your great-grandkids and being able to point at something and say:

“I was a part of building that.”

You’re doing real things that exist in the real world. You can do work that lasts long after you’re gone.

That’s pretty badass.

AI is rapidly changing white-collar work.

Tools like ChatGPT and Claude can already do parts of jobs that used to require people sitting in offices doing knowledge work. Nobody knows exactly how this is all going to turn out, but some of those jobs are going to change dramatically, and some may go away entirely. That doesn't really apply to the trades.

It’s going to be a long time before a robot can walk into someone’s house, diagnose what’s wrong with their HVAC system, crawl through an attic, replace the right component, talk to the homeowner, and deal with everything unexpected that happens along the way.

The trades are reasonably AI-proof.

That makes them one of the most interesting places to be from a long-term job-security perspective.

Finally, there simply aren’t enough people entering the trades.

A huge portion of the existing workforce is getting older and approaching retirement. As those people retire, we need a new generation of skilled workers to replace them. And that shortage creates opportunity.

It can make it easier to get into the industry. It can make it easier to grow. It can increase your job security. And if you become really good at what you do, you’re developing a skill that companies and customers desperately need. That combination creates tremendous opportunity for people entering the trades today.

The skilled trades aren’t right for everyone.

But if you want work where you can make good money, avoid massive college debt, solve real problems, use your hands, potentially become an entrepreneur, build things you’re proud of, and develop a skill that is extremely difficult to replace, you should at least seriously consider them.