Posts Tagged ‘ skilled trades ’

Are there Alternatives to College Careers?

By Kevin M

In the 1990s and early 2000s no one was seriously questioning the sustainability of large price increases in housing, or the integrity of the mortgages they secured. The same was true of the stock market in the 1980s, in the 1990s and again in the early 2000s. As we’ve seen in each case, that level of certainty is often the last step before a crisis.

A similar level of faith continues to exist in the assumed value of a college education and in the student loan debt commonly used to obtain it.

21st Century quandary: a college education has risks!

A college degree has value, and will continue to in the future—I have one myself. But the problem is that a college education today carries risks that it didn’t just a decade or two ago:
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Blue Collar Jobs Can’t be Moved Offshore

By Kevin M

In Jobs and Careers That Aren’t Coming Back we listed and discussed 13 career fields that are in a state of decline and unlikely to recover. Today we’ll cover the very opposite: job fields that are here to stay and likely to expand.

Global off-shoring of jobs and advances in technology are squeezing many jobs and careers into gradual extinction, as computers and cheap overseas labor eat away at once common fields of employment. But not all career fields are affected.

People who can produce or fix things often have the greatest job security. The world is full of machines, all in need of service or repair sooner or later. Being one of the people who can keep them going is a chance to start to a side business or to full scale self-employment. Equally important, though we tend to think of most innovation occurring in laboratories, many technological discoveries happen somewhere out in the field, produced by people who can work with their hands.

Can You Fix Things? Try Elevator Repair

By Kevin M with Larry McMahon, Elevator Repair Specialist

If you have a knack for repairs and you’ve been thinking about a career change, you might want to look into elevator repair…seriously!

Every contraption known to man eventually needs repair or replacement, virtually guaranteeing there will always be work available for the repairmen of the world. But the best opportunities are in fixing the equipment we don’t commonly think about, maybe because not nearly as many people ever enter the fields.

For starters, a college degree is not required for elevator repair. I did a web search for “elevator repair schools” and “elevator repair programs” and came up with nothing each time. Per Larry, on the job training is the only way in, and with so few people aware of the field, the line at the door isn’t all that long.

The Skilled Trades Are Well Worth Investigating

Kevin M

With the job market tightening up in so many fields, and many jobs perhaps gone forever, the time has come to look into opportunities in skilled blue collar occupations.

An article appeared this morning on Yahoo HotJobs called America’s Best Paying Blue Collar Jobs discusses the highest paying jobs in the skilled trades.

Most of these jobs involve installing, servicing and repairing existing systems and technologies of the sort that are required by modern civilization, and are not likely to be eliminated through advancing technologies or even globalization. For that reason alone they merit investigation.

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