American Thought Leaders - Mike Rowe: Why Are 7.2 Million Able-Bodied Men Not Looking for Work?

Episode Date: March 9, 2025

President Donald Trump has promised that he will bring back American manufacturing during his presidency. What if there aren’t enough Americans who want to work those jobs?“Every year for the last decade or so, for every five tradesmen who retire, two replace them,” says Mike Rowe, Emmy Award-winning TV host of the Dirty Jobs series.“If we don’t have a workforce who is disabused of the stigmas and the stereotypes and the myths and the misperceptions that have kept millions of kids from giving these jobs an honest look ... you’re going to wind up in a pretty nasty feedback loop,” he says.“People still don’t believe me. Even when I show them, not just the stats, but the actual humans who are making $150-grand a year welding with an $8,000 certificate, they just don’t believe it,” he says.Rowe is the founder of mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which awards millions of dollars in work ethic scholarships for young people to learn a skilled trade.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

You are listening to American Thought Leaders. If you enjoy our content, please leave us a five-star rating on this platform. Every year for the last decade or so, for every five tradesmen who retire, two replace them. If the president succeeds in truly reinvigorating American manufacturing, he's going to run into not just a skill gap, but a will gap. If we don't have a workforce who is disabused of the stigmas and the stereotypes and the myths and the misperceptions that have kept millions of kids from giving these jobs an honest look, you're going to wind up in a pretty nasty feedback loop. Mike Rowe is the Emmy Award-winning TV host of the Dirty Jobs series and CEO of the Mike Rowe Works Foundation, which awards millions in work ethic scholarships for young people

to learn a skilled trade. We really have to understand what we did to incite this. We took shop class out of high school. What we did was we removed those jobs from sight for everybody. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Mike Roe, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Great to see you again. Thanks.

We're kind of in an unusual time. I think American manufacturing is on the road back, but just at the very beginning of that road. Yeah. Tell me your thoughts on this. Well, I'm optimistic on the one hand, but I'm a little troubled on the other. I think maybe the best way to sum it up is with a series of phone calls that my foundation gets every week now.

Most recently, I heard from somebody over at the Blue Forge Alliance. The Blue Forge Alliance oversees the maritime industrial base. The maritime industrial base consists of 15,000 individual companies who are collectively tasked with building our country's submarines, our nuclear powered subs. Their current cadence requires them to deliver three a year.

I think two Virginia class and one Columbia class, or maybe the other way around. Regardless, it's a massive undertaking. These things are technically breathtaking, and the amount of skilled labor it takes to make one real is mind-boggling. So the guy calls and he says, look, we have to deliver 30 of these things

over the next decade, and we need to hire a hundred thousand skilled workers right now and then he says do you know where they are and I thought for a second and laughed because I get phone calls like this all the time and I didn't mean to be too glib but I said yeah man I know where they are. They're in the eighth grade. That's where they are right now. And you guys at the Navy and through Blue Forge Alliance, just like Ford and Caterpillar and every other big brand in this country that relies on skilled labor, you guys have to make a more persuasive case for the 7.6 million jobs that are currently open, currently open, that employers are struggling

to fill. These are good jobs, six-figure jobs. They're all welding, pipe-fitting, steam-fitting, electric, HVAC and so forth, because that skills gap is real. And if the president succeeds in truly reinvigorating American manufacturing, he's going to run into all of the challenges and obstacles that we're constantly talking about, whether it's tariffs and unions and so many other things come into play. But he's also going to run into not just a skill gap, but a will gap. And if we don't have a workforce

that is enthusiastically prepared to go to work, if we don't have a workforce who is disabused of the stigmas and the stereotypes and the myths and the misperceptions that have kept millions of kids from giving these jobs an honest look, we're going to have a whole different type of problem. Sorry for the filibuster, but one last thought. Back in 2009, when we started MicroWorks, President Obama announced a commitment to

three million shovel-ready jobs. And I wrote him an open letter, and I said, listen, I'm rooting for you. I love this idea but have you thought about the fact that the country by and large is not all that interested in picking up a shovel and if you don't create some kind of enthusiasm for the very jobs you're determined to create then you're gonna wind up in a pretty nasty feedback loop. And that's what we've been working on for the last 16 years. And the ship is finally starting to turn.

Before we continue, as I'm listening to you, I can't help but think of this crazy irony. I remember back in those days, there was this idea that people who had some of these jobs would need to, quote, learn to code. Do you remember that? Oh, sure. Right. Well, now we have, you know, this massive kind of AI revolution, chatbot, and you know, much more evolution. And that's mostly impacting as I'm taught, I've had a few shows on this now, right? The white collar workers. Yeah. Right. There's a whole lot of people that have, quote-unquote, learned to code that actually are going to

be out of jobs because the AI does it better already. On the other hand, and yes, robots are going to be doing some of the work, there's a whole lot of the skilled labor. That's where actually the jobs are going to be. That's what strikes me. What are your thoughts here? Well, my first thought is Elon Musk just just spoke and he would probably be better suited to answer that question.

But from what I've seen, you're absolutely right. For a long time, the robots were coming to upend the jobs in many, many factories. And then there was thought about, well, when the AI and the robots get together, God, what's that going to do? But now the whole thing is kind of the other way. The real fear and loathing in the working class

that I've seen is like paralegals and lawyers and people who really and truly, AI is just bigger IQ, bigger and bigger and bigger IQ. And when you apply that level of intelligence to searching and researching, right, I don't know how the humans are going to compete. But neither do I know how AI is going to supplant the plumber, who I'm currently waiting three days for, right,

they're in such short supply, or the electrician, I don't understand how it's going to make the process of physically building a house move faster, right? So many of these trades that we've been talking about elevating and reinvigorating for the last, I don't know, 16 years now, are suddenly in demand in a different way, because when people look at them, they realize you can't outsource that.

That job's not going to go away. It might be impacted to some degree by AI. I think AI to some degree is going to impact everything, but these jobs are not going to be replaced. And the 7.5 million positions that are open now, if we don't get in front of it, that number is just going to explode. You're basically saying that we have to have a make the trades great again effort or like

make them sexy, make them cool. Make them cool. I mean, and it's happening, right? God help us, but if you go on TikTok, and if you go on Instagram and some of the other platforms, you'll see tradespeople making a really persuasive case for their jobs. They'll share videos and they'll show you the wonder of fixing a thing in no uncertain terms.

And that helps a lot. But we really, I just think on a broad level, have to understand what we did to incite this. We took shop class out of high school. And we did it for a lot of reasons that may or may not have made much sense at the time. Loved shop class, by the way. I love it. I think I probably was one of the last. I know I was. When I was in high school,

79, 80, it was still there. But it was winding down. And through the 80s we really took it out. And what we did when we took it out was not just short change that cohort of kids who might have seen

something in the vocational world that made sense to their brain. What we did was we removed those jobs from sight for everybody. So like on your way to English class for math class, maybe once upon a time you would walk past the wood shop or the metal shop or the auto shop and maybe you'd look in there and maybe you'd see something that looks like work. And maybe that would get your brain thinking,

oh, I wonder what that means, I wonder what that is. That was all removed. I can't prove it, but I feel like I could draw a pretty straight line to the removal of shop class to $1.7 trillion in outstanding student loans for non-shop degrees. I think I could draw a pretty straight line from that event to the 7.6 million open jobs that exist now that don't require a four-year degree,

but instead some level of training, right? And I think you can also just look around more broadly. You can look at Hollywood. You can look at Main Street. You can look anywhere. And you can see the stigmas and the stereotypes that are still in people's minds that really make it difficult to recruit into the skilled trades.

All that crap has to be debunked. People still don't believe me, even when I show them, not just the stats, but the actual humans who are making 150 grand a year welding with an $8,000 certificate. They just don't believe it. You have to show them. So that's why I'm here at this thing. I really think that part of what has to be on the table in the next couple of years is a concerted effort

to debunk that nonsense. Because if we don't get the next generation really thinking affirmatively about the possibilities of mastering a skill, then those submarines aren't going to get built. And that's only a matter of national security. Mike, I'm going to get you to tell me about your amazing program in one moment. It's just something else came to

my mind. I understand there's a very significant number of men today, young men, who are not working and are not even looking. So tell me about that. And what do we do about it? and are not even looking. So tell me about that and what do we do about it? Well, look, it's sobering because it doesn't say anything good about our country, and it really doesn't say anything good about the individuals either. But it needs to be said because it's happening right in front of us. And the best guy to talk about this and I know of is an economist called Nick Eberstadt who wrote a book called Men Without Work and then republished it during the lockdowns because so much of what he said had not only come true, it had blasted beyond

his worst prognostications. The number is 7.2 million. 7.2 million able-bodied men are currently not only not working, they're affirmatively not looking for work. That's a heck of a thing. And when you look at 7.6 million open jobs and 7.2 million able-bodied men who have no interest in them. A rational person would go, God, we just have to hook those groups up together. I don't know how to do that. I truly don't. It worries me.

But I do know that behind those men is a new generation of people who aren't sitting home spending 2,000 hours a year on their screens. That's the other number, by the way. It's real. Those guys, they're not engaged in civic pursuits. They're not in the JCs. They're not in the Kiwanis Club. They're not in the Alliance Club.

They're not in their church. They're not making their community a better place. Not doing anything, really. So, you know, it's a different part of the conversation, but it's important to acknowledge. And yet it doesn't change the fact that whether they're 16 or 17 or 18 or 25 men, women, this part of our workforce needs to be reinvigorated fast. Or we got problems, again, way beyond my pay grade.

So let's talk about what we can do. When we were talking privately, you were telling me that basically, the sky's the limit for people that actually want to do this, that actually want to put the nose to the grindstone, work their butts off. You're there to support them with your foundation. Tell me about that. So we offer work ethic scholarships, and they're a little different than your typical academic scholarship or your athletic or your artistic scholarship, the scholarships for everything. We look for people. I'm more concerned with your attendance record than I am your GPA.

I'm more concerned with will you fill out our entire application? You got to jump through some hoops. Can you provide references? Like if you were, you know, applying for a job. Can you make a persuasive case for yourself? I like to look at video of the person. I like to have them write an essay. They got to sign a sweat pledge. You know, my sweat pledge is a 12-point statement of belief.

I'm gonna work my butt off, basically. That's the sweat pledge. It's a big part of it. Part of it was just an attempt to articulate what I think work ethic is, but part of it too was an attempt to kind of drill down on things like delayed gratification and just a decent attitude and a measure of personal responsibility and gratitude. Like the very first thing in the sweat pledge says, I believe I have won the greatest lottery of all time. I'm alive, I work, I walk the earth, above all things I'm grateful. Now, if you don't agree with that, we can still be friends, right? I don't need everybody to agree with me, but this particular pile of free money is not for you.

And I tell people that every year. It's impossible to feel sorry for yourself. It's impossible to feel like a victim if you're fundamentally grateful. So the pledge is full of these things that are really easy to make fun of, and people take their shots at it, and I don't mind because I'm super stingy

with the money we raise, right? And when I hand it out, I want to make sure it's to people who at least see the world more or less the way I do, and who are genuinely willing to pursue a skill that's in demand. That's what matters most. Beyond that, I can't control what happens. But the business of elevating and celebrating work ethic matters.

And we've so far awarded, I think, about 12 million in these scholarships. We'll do 2.5 million this month. We just opened our next work ethic scholarship program. But the thing is, to your earlier point, it could be 25 million. For the first time now, we have enough interest. We have people, people got the memo. People know that the four-year degree is not a guarantee. They know it's expensive.

Gen Z gets it. Many of their parents are starting to get it. Many guidance counselors are starting to get it. So we're seeing a level of interest now for the first time that makes me say well, because I don't fund it, I don't go out and do the chicken dinners and the golf tournaments, I don't put the arm on people, but I might start. Honestly, look there's a lot of money here and there are a lot of people who I think understand that this has to be part of a larger solution.

So I'll take your money, and then that's how I'll spend it. But something that strikes me here, I don't think you said it's free money. I don't think it's free money. You're giving people money to build their character. That's kind of what I'm hearing here. Well, I'm making fun of a kind of shorthand that exists in the scholarship game.

Like, if you're going to play the scholarship game, you don't really apply for one scholarship, because there's so many out there. And so it puts the people who administer the scholarships in an interesting spot. Like, if I find somebody who's a true rock star, maybe I want to pay for their entire education at UTI. Maybe I want to, you know, really get behind that person. At the same time, I want them to have skin in the game. Like I love

helping people later in life who want to retrain, learn a new skill. I like helping people who've got a year in and need some help finishing their second year. And I like the fact that smart people who hustle, they'll go, like the Marine Corps for instance, has a great scholarship fund that's earmarked just for sons and daughters of Marines. So I encourage people who apply for one of my scholarships, if they qualify for that one, to go apply there too. You can get your whole education paid for by three or four different scholarship funds who are all kind of on the same page. Now selfishly I'd like to do all of it, but that's the real point. Nobody's going to do all of it.

Nobody's actually going to close the skills gap either. This is very stoic. This is Sisyphean. This is quixotic. We're not going to fill 7.6 million jobs tomorrow, but I do think if we start to have the kind of conversation we're having, and if it catches fire, then things are going to happen fast,

which brings us back to where we started. If the president succeeds, either through tariffs or sheer persuasion, to bring manufacturing back to this country, you're going to see a flight towards skilled labor that I think is probably going to be unrivaled in the history of modern work. Really quick, give me some examples of some of the work that people receiving these scholarships

are doing, like maybe a handful. In the broadest way, I'm talking about any job that doesn't require a four-year degree. The ones that seem to get the most focus right now, welding, electricians, HVAC, plumbing, there's plenty of opportunity in woodworking, there's plenty of opportunity in automotive repair. We just raised, a few weeks ago, we auctioned off a truck that these guys built in like an auto shop on steroids up in Ohio called Sugar Creek. I mean this truck was amazing and we took it to Barrett Jackson and Barrett Jackson agreed to waive their fees

so we kept all of the money and the truck sold for one and a half million dollars. They sent me a check the next day so I got that sitting here along with a pile of other money and I only pointed out because there's getting the automotive industry really involved in a public way in filling the 70,000 jobs that exist in their industry is no less important than getting the American submarine industrial base really involved in closing the little gap in their place as well. And so, while I've had a chance to talk to some powerful people about a national campaign to elevate all this,

and I'm still wide open to doing it, I think it's going to happen on the state level too. Dakota is doing a great job, South Dakota and North. New Hampshire, I just met with Kelly Iote, the governor there. They've got a giant campaign to get trade schools back in schools, and shop class back in schools.

So it's only everything. It's only enormous. It impacts every zip code. It impacts every state. It certainly impacts our country. It impacts the way our country's perceived. It impacts the unemployment numbers, obviously, but the workforce participation rate as well.

We're talking about the way we choose to define a good job. And there's a whole list of stuff we can't control, but we can control that, right? And that's a big part of what my foundation does. Yeah, the scholarships are there. Yeah, the scholarships are there. Yeah, the money's there. Yes, we would like more of it. But having a conversation that affirmatively helps

change the definition of a good job and debunk some of those stigmas and stereotypes, that's job one. So you're saying that a national campaign with micro involved may be in the works? Look, I would do it. We're already doing it. We're just doing it modestly. It was funny. I mean, MicroWorks is the name of the campaign. Bobby Kennedy said to me about a year ago when we were talking about all sorts of things, he said, look, I can make it MacroWorks. Our country should make it MacroWorks.

I don't want to put a.gov after your initiative. I want you to just keep doing exactly what you're doing, but bigger. And so moving forward, that's the job. I can tell a story. I can give an interview, but I need to be in the business of introducing the country to hundreds of the people we've helped. People who are making 150 grand a year welding. People who took a plumbing certification and turned it into a mechanical contracting business. Cosmetologists. People who are making 80, 90 grand a year cutting hair, you know,

honest work. There's so many great stories of people who have prospered without a four-year degree. The more of them I tell, the more the needle moves. The more the needle moves, the more money we raise, the more money we raise, the more we can give out, and so forth. But would I do that? Yeah, I'd do that. You know what I think about? I don't know if we talked about this last time, but

when I was a kid, the country had a busted relationship with littering. Like, we littered. I'm not talking about the Green Movement or pollution in general. I'm talking very specifically about littering. And to change the way the country felt about that, the National Ad Council, with the help of private industry like Coca-Cola and some elected officials and some concerned citizens, launched this Keep America Beautiful campaign. They hired an actor iron eyes Cody Played the Indian who wept on the side of the highway when a big pile of trash came out of the window and landed at His feet and the same guys paddling through the rivers that are choked with garbage and the voiceover said people start pollution people can stop it and it took

It took ten years For the numbers to come around because it takes a long time to change behavior. But that campaign worked. By every measurable metric, it changed the way people behaved and thought about littering. There's a corollary with the way we think about the skilled trades, with the way we think corollary with the way we think about the skilled trades, with the way we think about work, with the way we think about higher education, whatever that is, versus what,

lower education or everything else. It impacts the way we use the language. It impacts everything. So yeah, on a national level, we ought to be doing something to get people's attention. And I think the best way to do that is to have somebody—okay, I'll do it—tell the stories of people who are really walking the walk. That's the plan. So yeah, if you know somebody with a few hundred million burning a hole in their pocket. I'm not surprised you were talking with Bobby Kennedy, now our HHS secretary here in America, because I know you've covered this a million times on your show, how important having good, gainful work is to one's psychology, one's mental health, and how important that is to one's psychology, one's mental health and how important that is to one's physical health. It's a health issue. You're right. Sorry, I interrupted you. I'm not a political animal,

and I don't see eye to eye with Bobby on everything, but he called me a year ago and asked if I had the had the belly to run, to run with him actually. It was flattering. I politely declined but we talked for hours about that exact issue and I don't know much about childhood disease or forever wars or all the other things that you know that are on his mind, but I do understand this and he sees it through the lens of reinvigorating the middle class and I don't disagree other people I've talked to see it through the lens of of Unions that's fine, but I I got no dog in that hunt either my foundation helps Union non-union I really don don't care but I but I loved the idea of taking what we've done to the next level and I've

always resisted it because I don't want to get over my skis and I don't want to write checks I can't cash and like I said I'm I'm really stingy with my donors' money. But it's tipping. And somebody has to do it. I'm game to help however I can, but the government is gonna have to play a role in having a really honest conversation. Because if we think we can create jobs simply by bringing manufacturing back

and not showing people that a life in that career can lead to something that looks like prosperity, then we better hope AI works, because we're not going to have the human components standing by to get the job done. Well, and one quick thought as we finish up, one of the things I've been watching is the birth rates in all the Western countries being so low. It's a disaster, frankly, just quicker

disaster for some countries other than others, mostly in the Western world. There's countries like Hungary, which have been really tried to move the needle. It's still very hard for them. there's countries like Hungary, which have been really tried to move the needle. It's still very hard for them. In Mongolia, they have moved the needle. This is what I've been told. They do an incredible celebration of motherhood. Someone is pecked every year, goes to the presidential palace, is celebrated on all the media. It's a whole big thing. It's all about what you've been talking about—celebrating the people that are going to be doing the thing that's really important for society. Sure. Right. So maybe that, you know, as we finish up here, you know, that feels like to me, like what you're trying to do here. Two thoughts. You're talking about gratitude. And that's why

it's the first tenant in the sweat pledge. And that's why I always mention it, because it's really tempting in this conversation to talk about, okay, the employers have this recruiting challenge, and it's easy to talk about, okay, all these people who are unemployed, they've gotta get the skills and the desire, and that, right, those are the parties that kind of push the conversation forward. It's not gonna really, really truly change until

the other 300 million Americans who share my addiction to smooth roads and affordable energy and indoor plumbing. The decent standard of living, yes. That's right. The national gratitude sounds like a hippie-dippy, irrelevant thing, but it's not. Because when a kid's trying to figure out what to do with his or her life, and they look around and they don't see shop class, and they don't... If you're a construction worker working on a road, and the people who drive by give you the finger because you've slowed them down, they don't feel great about their contribution

to the bigger picture, right? So part of what you're talking about in Mongolia, and I'm not up to speed on the Mongols, full disclosure, but if the society has a fundamental appreciation for the underlying topic, then the conversation gets a lot easier. Second point, regarding the math itself, you know, I'm no Malfusian and the declining population thing does does worry me, but what worries me more is the

specific math with regard to the trades. Every year for the last decade or so for every five tradesmen who retire, two replace them. Five leave, two come in. Now you don't you don't have to be a math major to look at that and go that's just the arithmetic is not on our side. That's the other thing pushing this forward. I probably should have started with this but I'll end with it instead because bookends are important. Part of what we're talking about is PR, changing the stigma, stereotypes, myths, misperception. But the other thing is just the cold calculus of the arithmetic. The numbers are not on our side and that's why it's so important to make the case now

to kids who are in middle school and in high school. Because if you've got 7.2 million able bodied men sitting on their ass, pardon me, not impressed by the opportunities that exist and able for whatever reason to not work, we can't ignore that. It just means we have to act that much faster to get the cohort we have engaged.