By Massimo Accardo
Raymond Emerick is a retired carpenter from Chicago who now teaches career technical education at Benton Harbor High School in southwest Michigan. His mission is to prepare his students for a new wave of opportunities. “It’s the best time in the last 50 years to get a job in the trade unions,” he said.
According to the National Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now 29,000 Americans who work in trades, transportation and utilities – up from 26,000 ten years ago. However, many of the workers in this field are aging out of the profession.
Emerick believes there is ample opportunity, and it is being squandered. “Guys my age are retiring with no young guys coming behind,” he said.
The average journeyman electrician is 53 years old and 70 percent of supervisors are baby boomers, according to the National Electrical Contractors Association. A majority of the electrical workforce will reach retirement age in the next two decades and over 12,000 jobs will need to be filled to supplement vacant roles and trade growth.
Emerick’s technical-education program is among several other efforts in Benton Harbor and around Michigan aiming to meet the labor demand. Students can apply credits toward their apprenticeships and get a journeyman card within three years, depending on the trade and the company that hires them.
Union workers visit Benton Harbor High School and explain to the students how appealing a blue-collar job can be, as it often includes benefits, a pension and job security. In the U.S., an apprentice carpenter can begin with a salary around $40,000 and earn nearly double after several years, including overtime.
The high demand for trade workers is happening as college enrollment is down nationwide. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, between 2010 and 2021, undergraduate enrollment decreased by 15 percent.
Steven Benscoter, president and chief operating officer of the door manufacturing company Special-Lite in Benton Harbor, said some students are starting to question whether a college is worth the money.
“What’s the value of taking on the debt for a four-year degree and what do I get in return for that?” said Benscoter who is also on the board for the Michigan Colleges Alliance.
Kristian Trae, a student at Washtenaw Community College, shares this sentiment. For a two-year period at WCC, students will learn a specialized skill and exit with a certification, and in Trae’s case, a guaranteed job.
Trae is an apprentice at Zoller Inc., a company that specializes in tool measurement. He is training to be a computerized numerical control setup technician and receives $21.30 per hour for his days in the shop and $200 for his twice-weekly days on campus.
“The only thing they ask for is eagerness,” Trae said. “Eagerness to learn and to improve.”
In Michigan, the annual cost of in-state tuition for community college is just over $4,000, about one- quarter of what students pay for a four-year university.
Poverty and teen pregnancy
The youth in Benton Harbor face other challenges as they prepare to enter the job market.
Poverty and teen pregnancy remain prominent issues in the city, often times preventing economic mobility.
A study conducted in 2020 by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services found that Benton Harbor was ranked as the city with the highest teen birth rates in all of Michigan.
James Gunter Sr. is the founder of Present Pillars, a nonprofit organization in Benton Harbor that offers peer mentorship for young fathers. He said that once people enroll in the program, one of the first things they check off is whether they are interested in trades.
“You don’t want that grace period” between high school and college where “they’re not doing anything because the chances are, that’s where you’ll get stuck,” he said.
Rayvonte Bell is a recruiter for the Michigan Workforce Development Institute, a partner of Present Pillars. The goal of the organization is to funnel anyone interested in the trades into a nine-week program to introduce them to the basics and then pair them with an apprenticeship.
Online classes take place Tuesday through Friday and in-person classes are on Saturday mornings. There they learn OSHA 30, which is a safety prerequisite for most employers, as well as CPR and other certifications.
“The trades have come to us,” Bell said. The courses are taught by tradespeople, most of whom are looking to employ.
The Michigan Workforce Development Institute receives federal grants under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act through Michigan’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (LEO). Since 2019, LEO has received more than $27 million in federal funding to incentivize apprenticeships.
Math and marijuana
Despite federal aid, education gaps are preventing some young adults from entering the workforce.
According to State Representative Joey Andrews, whose District 38 includes Benton Harbor, math proficiency exams have been a roadblock for many students. “That is where a whole bunch of them hit a filter point,” he said.
In the Benton Harbor School District, less than 10 percent of high school students tested at or above the reading and math proficiency level for their age group this year.
This trend is reflected in the Institute’s first cohort, where only two applicants made it through all nine weeks. According to Bell, the second cohort will begin in June and end in August, at which point he hopes to have 16 applicants graduate.
However, there is another barrier preventing the program from reaching its full potential. “When it comes to the drug test, a lot of people I recruited ended up failing, specifically on the THC test,” Bell said.
Although recreational use of marijuana is legal in Michigan, Bell’s program is federally funded and must adhere to federal guidelines. If marijuana is detected during a screening, candidates forfeit their opportunity and must wait 90 days to re-apply.
“It creates a lot of inequities, especially when you have high marijuana use among youth, and particularly around Black and Brown youth,” Andrews said.
Another hurdle for people who live in Benton Harbor is the lack of public transportation. “It’s hard to get a job if you can’t get to work, and you can’t get a car if you don’t have a job, so you’re sort of stuck in this endless loop,” Andrews added.
To help combat this issue, the Michigan Workforce Development Institute gives members of its program a weekly $50 gas card as well as a weekly $200 stipend, according to Bell. The program also accepts felons.
Andrews believes this historically unique time in the trades can change things for Benton Harbor youth. “If you want to escape generational poverty, you have to take a generational approach to wealth building,” he said.