Why the Skilled Trades Need More Kids Dreaming Big

I'm a welder. I've spent years around job sites, watching skilled tradespeople — welders, electricians, linemen, machinists — do work that keeps the entire world running. And I've also watched a lot of them get ready to retire, without enough young people coming up behind them to take their place.

That gap isn't an abstract statistic to me. It's coworkers I've watched leave the trade with nobody trained to fill their role. It's job openings that stay open for months. It's a skill set built over decades, walking out the door.

Kids don't dream about being welders or electricians, not because they wouldn't love it, but because they rarely see it as an option. Children's books are full of doctors, astronauts, and firefighters — and those are great! But where are the linemen? The machinists? The crane operators?

That's the gap I wanted to help close with Amazing Trades: Heroes Who Build Our World. Not to push every kid toward a trade, but to make sure they know the option exists — and that the people who do this work are heroes too.

If you're raising a kid who loves building, fixing, or figuring out how things work, you're raising exactly the kind of kid this industry needs. Let's give them the chance to dream about it early.