The Art of Manliness - #308： The Case for Blue Collar Work With Mike Rowe

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:20.740 Well, in America, there's an assumption that the most meaningful careers are found in office

00:00:24.640 buildings among those taking part in the information economy rather than the nitty

00:00:28.580 gritty of blue-collar trades. And to be eligible for these desirable white-collar jobs, you need to

00:00:33.040 take out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans so you can go to college for four years to

00:00:36.860 get a degree. The sacrifice is always worth it, though, or so we're told. My guest today on the

00:00:42.640 show has made a career of questioning in this narrative. In fact, he argues that our obsession

00:00:46.320 with college education and white-collar work to the denigration of blue-collar kind has left us

00:00:50.580 economically and spiritually poorer, both on the individual and national level. His name is Mike

00:00:55.020 Rowe. You might have seen his popular show, Dirty Jobs. Since his time as a TV host, he's become

00:01:00.000 an ardent advocate of trade work through his foundation, Mike Rowe Works. Today on the show,

00:01:04.100 Mike and I discuss where the idea of dirty jobs came from and why the show about blue-collar workers

00:01:08.260 became a surprise national hit. We then explore why we devalue blue-collar work, the societal and

00:01:13.760 individual consequences of that devaluation, and what Mike is doing to make pursuing vocational

00:01:17.960 and trade work cool and viable again. If you're a young man trying to figure out if college and an

00:01:22.020 office job is right for you, or if you're a guy in a dead-end office job looking for an

00:01:26.000 alternative, Mike is going to make a strong case on why you should consider putting on a hard hat

00:01:29.720 and getting your hands dirty. After the show is over, check out our show notes at aom.is

00:01:33.980 slash Rowe, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:01:37.160 Mike Rowe, welcome to the show.

00:01:51.720 Thanks for having me, guys. Always a pleasure.

00:01:53.700 Well, a big fan of your work with Dirty Jobs, and plus the work you're doing now after Dirty Jobs,

00:01:59.480 promoting the trades, being an advocate for that. And I got to say, your TED Talk about

00:02:05.160 sheep castration holds a dear place in my heart, because my grandfather just passed away last year,

00:02:11.720 101. When he was in high school, he was a shepherd. And in his memoirs, he goes into detail about

00:02:19.220 sheep castration. And I remember when I saw that episode, when you put your teeth on a sheep's

00:02:25.880 testicles, I was like, I know that. I know how to do that because of a grandpa. 0.98

00:02:30.640 You know how few people have actually uttered that sentence in the history of time?

00:02:35.160 I mean, you know, it's just, it's, it's Dirty Jobs was so, was so great in the sense that no two

00:02:43.620 days were ever the same. But that particular day, yeah, you know, the sheep, the testicles, 0.98

00:02:51.420 the cameras, and off you go. And yeah, that episode changed everything. Really looking back on it, 0.97

00:02:58.120 it was, it was something the network didn't want to put on the air. It was something people were

00:03:03.500 completely freaked out about. It was something we had gone out of our way to get permission to do.

00:03:10.560 You know, I mean, I called all the proper acronyms. I called the Humane Society. I called the,

00:03:15.960 you know, PETA. They told me how it was supposed to work. And when I got there, of course,

00:03:21.180 it was a totally different deal. And we just learned so many things in that episode that it

00:03:25.940 completely changed the direction of the show. And to some extent, my own career. It's amazing what'll

00:03:30.940 happen when you, you know, bite the balls off a sheep. How do you, how did it change the direction 0.98

00:03:34.800 of the show after you did that? Well, in a couple of ways, you know, we, you have to understand,

00:03:39.880 first of all, Dirty Jobs was such an anomaly. It never was supposed to be a hit, much less even on

00:03:46.540 the air. You know, we, we snuck onto the air in 2003 at a time when there was really no other shows

00:03:53.040 about work anywhere. And, and the network was, was kind of horrified, to be honest, by the number of

00:04:01.160 people who liked it, because it didn't really fit with their, with their brand, or at least what their

00:04:06.280 notion of what the brand was at the time. So there was a lot of cognitive dissonance about the show.

00:04:12.780 And so we were constantly at odds. You know, I was always trying to push the envelope a little bit

00:04:18.820 with the network and argue for a completely transparent look at whatever the job at hand

00:04:25.980 was. And, you know, so there was just a lot of, there were files, Brett, that, that already existed

00:04:35.000 on me files from OSHA, from the Humane Society, from PETA, from the FBI. I mean, there's an army of

00:04:42.160 angry acronyms that used to watch the show and complain about things that they saw on TV that didn't

00:04:47.680 comport entirely with their worldview. So when I told my boss that I was going to be castrating

00:04:55.980 sheep, she said, for God's sakes, Michael, her name was Gina, Gina McCarthy. She said, for God's

00:05:01.880 sakes, please make sure we do this right. So, you know, I called the proper authorities to tell them

00:05:09.740 what I was going to do. And, and they explained that you would take rubber bands and put them over

00:05:14.040 the testicles of the sheep and that would retard the flow of blood. And eventually the testicles 0.94

00:05:19.320 would fall off. And I thought, well, that's pretty weird, but it'll be great TV. And of course, when 0.99

00:05:23.960 we went there, there were no rubber bands. It was just a rancher and his wife and a pen knife

00:05:29.960 and a scrotum that was quickly sliced open. Two testicles were exposed and this guy started 0.99

00:05:36.040 literally biting the balls out of the scrotum of sheeps and spitting them into the bucket that I was 1.00

00:05:42.240 holding. And it was just so, it was just so shocking because it was so unexpected because 0.98

00:05:46.720 I'd done all my homework. You know, I knew how we were supposed to do it. So my Ted talk, which by the

00:05:53.280 way, I had no idea I was giving one until about 20 minutes before I gave it. But my Ted talk was

00:05:58.500 really an explanation of that episode and how you can get all the authorities to tell you precisely how

00:06:07.220 you're supposed to do a thing and still be completely dead wrong. As brutal as it sounded, the sheep

00:06:13.080 that we castrated with our teeth fared so much better than the ones that we used the rubber bands

00:06:21.920 on. Because, you know, after Albert bit the balls off and spit them into my bucket, I was like, 0.87

00:06:27.500 oh, hold on a minute. We can't do it this way. We have to do it the approved way. And so we did it 0.97

00:06:32.980 the approved way. And then we had a chance to see the aftermath. And if you, if you look at a baby

00:06:38.180 lamb with a rubber band around its testicles next to another baby lamb who just had its testicles 0.97

00:06:44.500 bitten off, the baby lamb with the testicles bitten off doesn't have a care in the world. He there's 0.98

00:06:50.360 very little blood. He's already forgotten about that, which is gone. And he's prancing around like

00:06:56.640 it's a new day. The one with the rubber band around his nuts, he limps around and, and quivers and 0.60

00:07:02.480 sits in the corner in agony. It changed the direction of the show. And it changed the direction

00:07:06.780 of my career because it indicated perfectly that you can be absolutely right in terms of compliance 1.00

00:07:14.260 and still somehow managed to have your head completely up your own ass. 0.99

00:07:19.560 You talk about peripatia, that Greek concept in the show. 1.00

00:07:23.620 Yeah. Adagnoresis and peripatia. Sure. That's it.

00:07:26.940 I'm wondering who, I wonder who's the guy that figured out you bite the testicles off a sheep 1.00

00:07:31.760 to castrate them. Like, oh, that's, that was the best way to do it. 0.99

00:07:36.060 I, I shudder to think like the true etymology of that, of that process. But, but I would imagine

00:07:43.220 it simply evolved out of practicality. You know, if you're, I'm sure your grandfather would have told

00:07:49.460 you back in the day, you know, you're not out in the field with a team of people. It's really just

00:07:54.760 you and sometimes one other set of hands to properly apply the banding method. You need three

00:08:02.020 people. And that's, you know, I mean, that's, that's a lot of extra personnel. This, this method

00:08:09.560 is quicker. It's less painful for the sheep. It's a hell of a lot weirder, admittedly, but primarily

00:08:17.340 it's more efficient. And in the end, one of the big lessons from dirty jobs was effectiveness

00:08:24.720 is ultimately the thing that drives innovation. Conversely, and a little weirdly, not efficiency,

00:08:32.620 but effectiveness. And we could probably do a whole hour on the difference between the two, but

00:08:36.560 bottom line, biting the balls off sheep is a lot more effective than the approved method.

00:08:43.800 Yeah. So, I mean, you, you mentioned your, your mind shift changed after that moment. Like, 0.67

00:08:48.500 so before that, were you, were you kind of following the experts quote unquote that, okay,

00:08:53.260 this is the right way to do it. And I'm, I'm here to make sure this is how work should be done.

00:08:57.540 When I don't see it according to how the experts say it should be done, then something's wrong.

00:09:01.500 And so after that you decided, I guess your shift was, well, let's just see what the guys on

00:09:05.760 the ground are actually doing this, what they think is useful. And that's, that's what we should,

00:09:10.960 that's what we should, we should go after. You know, in hindsight, it's, it's easy and tempting

00:09:16.200 to always frame these conversations in terms of the exact moment of awareness. And I said that in

00:09:23.880 my Ted talk, and it was true to a degree, but, but the real truth is awareness and understanding and

00:09:31.340 realizations, anagoresis, peripatia, enlightenment, that stuff is almost always more analogous.

00:09:40.960 to a frog in the boiling water. You know, it's, it's things you realize over time. You, you have

00:09:48.240 a moment of awareness, but it doesn't really take root until you have some proof that you can really

00:09:56.220 put behind it. And that takes time. So for me, the real peripatetic moment in my career happened in a

00:10:04.340 sewer before dirty jobs, when I was working at evening magazine and I was, I was working on a segment

00:10:10.260 called somebody's got to do it. And I kind of, I didn't hate my career. In fact, I, I'd always kind

00:10:17.600 of liked it. I'd been impersonating a host for, for 15 years was more effective as a guest instead

00:10:25.360 of a host. That realization happened when I was working with a sewer inspector, thanks to a rat 0.61

00:10:31.040 actually, who assaulted me and drove me headfirst into just a river of, again, another long story.

00:10:37.260 But that's when I began to realize that personally I could do better on camera as an apprentice,

00:10:42.820 as opposed to an expert, as a, uh, as a guest, as opposed to a host. So when I sold dirty jobs,

00:10:50.560 I went into it with this understanding that I, I didn't want to do or impersonate a conventional

00:10:59.920 host. In fact, my pitch to discovery was, look, you guys, you guys need another expert. Like you need a

00:11:05.700 shanker. I mean, what you need is a fan of the brand out in the world doing things not on your

00:11:12.200 behalf, but out of his own misplaced curiosity. That was the pitch for dirty jobs. When we started 0.89

00:11:18.500 shooting it, what I learned again and again, over and over and over was that just about everything I

00:11:25.920 thought I knew about work had been, well, was wrong. Honestly, I had, I had become, uh, disconnected

00:11:34.740 from a lot of the things that I had grown up with. You know, I had a lot of certainty growing up. My

00:11:40.080 grandfather was a, uh, was a master electrician and also a plumber and a steam fitter and a pipe

00:11:45.500 fitter and a welder and a guy who could build a house without a blueprint who only went to the seventh

00:11:50.340 grade. My, my connection to work as a kid was profound. I knew where our food came from. I knew

00:11:58.320 where our energy came from, you know, and I had a lot of direct lines between how things worked and

00:12:04.460 how the working of things benefited me. By the time I was 43, after working for 15, 16 years in

00:12:11.300 Hollywood, I'd forgotten most of that, or at least become disconnected from it. And so for me on a very

00:12:18.380 personal level, dirty jobs became a reminder of all of those disconnects, all of the things that I, 0.99

00:12:26.420 that I had taken for granted from the lights coming on when we flicked the switch to the crap going away

00:12:31.300 when we flushed the toilet, those little miracles took on a larger significance for me, thanks to that

00:12:38.160 show. And I think maybe hopefully, uh, to the viewers as well. So that's a long answer to your

00:12:43.520 question, but, but peripatetic moments happen one on top of the next and their effect is almost always

00:12:51.320 exponential. So one day you wake up and you look back on all that stuff and you realize, holy crap,

00:12:57.740 that's the point where my thinking diverged. That's the point where my career went in a direction I

00:13:04.800 didn't intend it to. And, and so you can look back and you can retrofit things and try and sound

00:13:10.500 smarter than you are. But in truth, in the moment, you're just a guy biting the balls off sheep, 0.99

00:13:16.260 trying to understand why everything you thought you knew about this process turned out to be 0.75

00:13:22.060 completely upside down. Well, speaking of how your career went a different direction than you thought

00:13:26.500 it would go, I mean, since dirty jobs ended, you've become an advocate for what, for making manual labor

00:13:32.740 cool again, started different foundations. We'll talk about that here in a bit, but let's talk about

00:13:36.980 this. Why do you think manual labor is seen as uncool, right? And most kids don't aspire to be

00:13:44.120 a plumber. They aspire to be some, I don't know, social media influencer or banker or something.

00:13:50.580 Why, why, why don't people want to go into the trades? We're suspicious of anything that doesn't

00:13:58.720 come with a playbook. We want a playbook. We want to know what a good job is and the best way to figure

00:14:06.380 out what a good job is. Now, I don't subscribe to any of this, but, and I'm not an expert, obviously,

00:14:11.660 but I, but I think, I think what's going on right now in society is we have a lot of anxiety around

00:14:19.440 education and vocation. And that anxiety primarily exists with parents who are desperate not to screw

00:14:26.600 their kids. There's also anxiety within the educational system from administrators and guidance

00:14:31.220 counselors who don't want to be accused of sending some kid down the wrong path. And of course,

00:14:37.860 there's a lot of anxiety among kids themselves because they're looking at the vast unknown future

00:14:43.760 of their careers and, and hoping not to, at the same time, there's endless money available and a lot

00:14:50.420 of pressure to borrow it in order to go down what a lot of people have said is the best path for the most

00:14:58.280 people. If you put all of that stuff together, essentially, you've got a lot of anxious people

00:15:04.260 saying, look, this is your best hope of being happy. Borrow the money, get a four-year degree,

00:15:12.240 get out in the world and get busy chasing your dream. And I know I'm generalizing, but from what I've seen,

00:15:21.700 that's, that's, that's the trope, that's the bromide, that's the, that's the platitude that informs

00:15:28.940 so much of what passes as good advice today. Regarding why blue collar work is not aspirational,

00:15:40.560 I think the main reason is because parents are hardwired to want something better for their kids

00:15:48.520 than they had. The problem is we don't know what better means, but we now know that we have to

00:15:54.220 define something as subordinate. So it gets a little wonky, but as theories go, I think it really comes

00:16:01.960 down to in the mid seventies, we decided that college needed a big PR campaign and we gave it one.

00:16:11.440 And that PR campaign elevated the importance of a four-year degree, not just for its inherent benefit,

00:16:20.820 but it elevated it at the expense of every other form of education. So the message that started to

00:16:28.960 go out to high school kids was, if you don't do this, you're liable to wind up over here turning a

00:16:36.980 wrench or doing something that you really don't want to do some kind of, uh, you know, vocational

00:16:42.780 consolation prize. So what we did was we separated higher education from all other forms of enlightenment.

00:16:49.760 Then we attached a price tag to higher education that exponentially rocketed through the roof.

00:16:56.520 That was in the mid seventies. At the same time, pop culture started to portray

00:17:01.180 traditional working vocations as subordinate. I mean, if there's a plumber, come on, he's 300 pounds

00:17:09.640 with a giant butt crack. It's just the way we portray plumbers. We write books, you know, 0.81

00:17:16.160 look at the bestselling books over the last couple of years. The four hour work week is somewhere near

00:17:20.640 the top. I'm friends with Tim Ferriss. I like his book, but the things we started to respond to

00:17:27.300 were messages that said, Hey, you can work less. And if you, if you don't work less than you're

00:17:34.300 going to be a sucker. So pop culture portrayals of work in the media, educational distinctions that 0.97

00:17:42.220 are basically presented as a false choice. In my opinion, all combined to drive the cost of college

00:17:49.480 through the roof, $1.3 trillion in student loans right now, as a result of this cookie cutter approach

00:17:55.980 to, you know, what a good education is. And on the other end, where does most of the opportunity

00:18:01.420 exists today? Well, it's in the skills gap. It's 5.6 million available jobs right now that nobody seems

00:18:08.260 to want that are sitting there waiting to be filled. It's not a coincidence that 75% of those jobs

00:18:16.140 don't require a four year degree, but rather training for the very jobs that we're talking about

00:18:22.620 right now. So again, kind of a meandering answer, but the reason blue collar jobs fell out of favor

00:18:31.700 is because alternative education fell out of favor. It's because the people who do the kinds of work

00:18:38.720 that we're talking about started being portrayed in a negative light. And here we are. The skills

00:18:46.560 gaps, not a mystery. It's just a reflection of, of what we value. So too is the cost of a four-year

00:18:53.040 degree, in my opinion. Right. And the irony is this playbook that we've been pushing on our culture.

00:19:00.060 I think it's just resulted in a lot of unhappiness. You have people with four-year degrees up in their

00:19:05.480 eyeballs in debt, working some office job that they hate and barely making ends meet. Yeah.

00:19:11.080 Look, the hell of it is, you know, you, here's what happens to me that, that's always problematic.

00:19:21.060 I'll do an interview like this and everyone will more or less agree that there's a, there's a problem

00:19:27.840 worth talking about. But what comes back over the net is Mike is anti-college and sometimes anti-education

00:19:35.620 and nothing could be further from the truth. The problem that you're describing happens because

00:19:40.980 of money. It's not, it's not that a liberal arts degree is bad. I've got one and it served me well,

00:19:46.080 but I got mine in 1984 and it costs $12,000 today. The same degree from the same school costs $85,000.

00:19:54.760 So if you spend that kind of money and borrow that kind of money and wind up suddenly in a cubicle

00:20:01.480 doing something that, as it turns out, you really didn't want to do, how do you get off the road?

00:20:09.520 You know, you've already majored in your major, you've already borrowed the money and now you've

00:20:14.540 got to pay all that stuff off and you don't really have the freedom or the flexibility to hit the reset

00:20:19.840 button without, you know, punching out of the whole proposition with a giant pile of debt.

00:20:25.680 That's really what the problem is, you know, and, and I feel badly for this generation because they 1.00

00:20:33.180 get a bad rap in my opinion, you know, and obviously there's room for improvement everywhere, but

00:20:38.800 you know, we, we raised an entire generation of kids to believe that if they borrow the money

00:20:44.780 and if they get the degree, then they will get the job of their dreams and then they will be happy.

00:20:50.060 That entire, that entire proposition is fallacious and, and you can see it on the faces of dissatisfied

00:21:01.360 workers, not just in cubicles across the country, but in all kinds of jobs because so many people

00:21:09.820 have come out of our educational system convinced that the key to job satisfaction is finding the job

00:21:17.340 that will satisfy you. And of all the lessons that came out of dirty jobs, I think the biggest one

00:21:23.980 is the fact that that belief is completely and totally upside down. So don't follow your passion.

00:21:30.220 That's bad advice. I think it's bad advice, but I would never say, don't be passionate about what you

00:21:35.480 do. See, this is the, the, the fun part of dirty jobs. Once it really got its feet under it. And once it

00:21:43.320 became a thing was that it, it allowed me to look back honestly and question some of the advice that

00:21:49.940 I'd gotten in my life. And I think a lot of other people have as well, follow your passion is somewhere

00:21:55.860 near the top. The worst advice ever given it's right up there with work smart, not hard, but always

00:22:02.580 follow your passion. The first time I saw it, it was written on a photo of a guy in a kayak paddling

00:22:10.320 on some lake with mist on the surface. And there were butterflies in the background and maybe even

00:22:20.060 a unicorn. And it was just awful, you know, and the, and under it, it just says, always follow your

00:22:25.800 passion. And I'm just like, what, what, what does that even mean? So on dirty jobs, the corollary was

00:22:33.120 never follow your passion, but always, always bring it with you. Passion's too important to ignore,

00:22:40.100 but it's too fickle to, to follow. And I just, I think, look, if you really want to see what

00:22:48.220 following your passion looks like, watch any of the first episodes of American Idol, you know,

00:22:55.640 any of the seasons, episodes one through five, where you see tens of thousands of people

00:22:59.660 absolutely passionate about singing, right? Absolutely passionate about their, their artistry and

00:23:07.380 their, and their love of vocalizing. And they show up and they audition. And it's, it's incredible

00:23:14.220 to me that so many people can't sing. That's, that's obvious. What's incredible is that these

00:23:21.080 18, 19, 20 year old people are realizing for the first time in their life, the first time in their

00:23:28.080 life that they can't sing. That's amazing to me. And, and that disconnect, I mean, you can see it in

00:23:35.600 their faces when they realize this is the first time somebody told them they're no good at a thing

00:23:40.640 that they like. And so it's a great truth that, you know, we used to teach early on, but now a lot

00:23:48.320 of people don't find out until it's very, very, very late in their career. But the reality is it's

00:23:53.880 entirely possible to be very passionate about something that, that you suck at. And, um, and that's, 0.96

00:24:01.400 that's useful, especially if you're going to attach money to your pursuit. So if you're going to go

00:24:07.500 out into the world to try and make a living, you know, the big lesson on dirty jobs, time and time

00:24:12.420 again, the people I met all said the same thing. I didn't go looking to be a septic tank cleaner.

00:24:18.140 I went looking for an opportunity. And that started by watching where everybody else was heading and

00:24:24.360 going in the other direction. Then I bought a septic tank cleaning truck. And then I hired three people.

00:24:29.160 Then I bought another truck and then another truck after that. Now I've got 12 people. We

00:24:33.440 clean septic tanks. I'm a millionaire. I've got a summer house and a margarita machine next to my

00:24:38.180 pool. Yes, I clean septic tanks and I'm passionate about my life and my career, but I didn't start.

00:24:47.360 I didn't get here by sitting down one day when I was 18 years old and going, okay, what is going to

00:24:53.740 make me happy? This will make me happy. Therefore, I'm going to go get that. And I'm not going to be

00:25:00.800 happy until I do. Look, we do the same thing with romance, right? Same exact thing. Happiness

00:25:08.440 vis-a-vis romance today requires us to find our soulmate. Well, where's our soulmate? Depends who

00:25:16.600 you ask. Maybe she's on Match. Maybe he's on Tinder. Maybe it's eHarmony. Maybe it's in the bar

00:25:23.680 down the street. But it just seems like a tough way to go if your romantic happiness is going to

00:25:32.800 be entirely contingent upon your ability to find the one other person walking around on the planet

00:25:38.620 who you were meant to be with. It's no less nuts, in my view, to approach the wide world of work and

00:25:46.540 say, okay, all this opportunity is out there, but the one that's going to make me happy, that's the

00:25:52.660 one I got to find. And then I can be happy. We just make it pretty hard for ourselves, I think. And

00:25:59.660 the dirty jobbers I met did not fall victim to that. We've had a guest on the show, a guy named Cal

00:26:04.920 Newport. He wrote a book, So Good They Can't Ignore You. And yeah, he agrees. Following your

00:26:09.300 passion is terrible advice. He says, passion comes whenever you get really good at a job and you see

00:26:15.380 that you're effective in the world and that you provide value. That's when you start feeling

00:26:19.740 passionate about the job. That's when you start feeling satisfaction with your jobs when you see

00:26:23.940 that. But it's not chasing your passion. Yeah. Good for him. I couldn't agree more. Gladwell put it,

00:26:30.080 I thought pretty well too. A couple of books ago, he talked about meaningful work. Meaningful work

00:26:37.280 is the thing that ultimately will lead to satisfaction faster than anything else. But again, the trick is

00:26:45.380 there is no book out there called meaningful work, right? But we act as though there is. We're telling

00:26:54.940 our kids today that this work over here is meaningful and important and worth your time. This work over

00:27:04.140 here is not. Why we do that is really, I think, one of the great questions. I've never heard it answered

00:27:14.800 properly. I've tried to, but I usually just ramble on into incoherence because it's almost unknowable.

00:27:23.600 But we can't help ourselves as a society, as a culture, as parents, as teachers. We simply can't

00:27:31.620 help but somehow prioritize jobs into this jacked up ranking system that is completely and totally

00:27:43.340 counterintuitive to the result we want. You can Google 100 top jobs and you'll have thousands of

00:27:51.260 pages, thousands of pages filled with hundreds and hundreds of surveys about what the best jobs

00:27:59.000 are. You can do the same thing with schools every year, every year. Every major publication rolls out

00:28:07.420 the top colleges in the country and the top jobs in the country. And you'll never find a trade school

00:28:14.840 on that list. And you'll never find the jobs that are begging to be filled right now on that list.

00:28:25.220 We just double down on the worst odds in the world. And we make it really, really hard for kids

00:28:32.360 to feel excited about learning a skill. That's why we do what we do, you know, in this foundation thing.

00:28:40.000 If you train somebody to weld, well, then you can start working in nine months at 60 grand.

00:28:47.060 Two years later, you can easily be making six figures. But beyond that, the business of mastering

00:28:54.060 a trade opens an entire set of doors that most people didn't even know existed. And so way leads

00:29:03.200 on to way, as the poet said. And before you know it, you'll find meaning in your work,

00:29:10.820 whatever the work is.

00:29:12.720 So let's talk about some of the big picture societal consequences of this skill gap you talked about.

00:29:18.760 These are skill gap is there's jobs that are available ready for workers that just isn't anyone

00:29:23.280 there to take them because they don't have the appropriate skills. I mean, how does that affect

00:29:27.360 us as a country on a high level?

00:29:29.460 Well, it's a micro macro thing. So look, on a on a micro level, no pun intended, it's it's

00:29:35.700 consequences are, are devastating, you know, for an individual who goes down the wrong road,

00:29:42.520 simply because he or she didn't know other opportunities were available. That to me is the

00:29:48.480 very, the very definition of, of a tragedy. You know, I mean, Aristotle said a tragedy was that

00:29:55.380 moment in the narrative where the protagonist comes face to face with the unescapable truth

00:29:59.960 of their own identity. And when you realize that your identity was based on the pursuit of a thing

00:30:07.540 that you, that you never really cared for or understood at the expense of all the other

00:30:14.880 opportunities that are out there, that's, that really is nothing short of a, of a personal micro

00:30:20.300 tragedy. To answer your question on a macro level, I think the skills gap, not to overstate it, but

00:30:28.320 I think it's a matter of national security. Our, a balanced workforce is kind of like a coin,

00:30:37.940 you know, each, each side heads and tails is, is equally important. We don't have a balanced

00:30:45.020 workforce today. And the most obvious ramification of that is supply and demand. Call a plumber with a

00:30:54.440 plumbing emergency right now. Tell me how long it takes for him to get there or her and tell me how

00:31:02.020 much it costs. I guarantee you the first number, how long does it take him or her to get there is

00:31:08.540 going to be a lot larger than it was 10 years ago. And the second number, how, how much does it cost?

00:31:14.660 That's going to be a lot larger too. So the cost of taking care of our infrastructure

00:31:20.820 is going through the roof, plumbing, electric, heating, air conditioning. I'm talking about our

00:31:27.720 personal infrastructures in our homes, but the same thing is happening on a macro level. And I think

00:31:35.420 when I, when I, when I look at the current administration's desire to invest a trillion

00:31:41.600 dollars in infrastructure repair, I say the same thing I did eight years ago when the last guy

00:31:50.580 promised 3 million shovel ready jobs in 2008. I remember I, I wrote a letter to the president back

00:31:57.820 then. And I said, look, I'm pulling for you. Good luck. I've got this foundation. If I can help,

00:32:04.040 I will. But the short version from my position is this, if you're getting 3 million shovel ready jobs,

00:32:12.520 then you have to understand that you're talking to a country that really doesn't admire the business

00:32:20.920 of picking up a shovel. You just have to understand that. And you have to hit the, the PR element of

00:32:28.140 your program squarely on the head. Eight years later, I said the same thing to the current guy.

00:32:34.040 If you're going to spend a trillion dollars to open up infrastructure repair, you have to,

00:32:41.200 you, you surely know that we do not have a workforce standing by that's trained to do work.

00:32:48.360 It's going to take years of training people and getting them the skills that they need. And that's

00:32:55.260 not going to happen until, or unless we celebrate these opportunities for what they are. So on a national

00:33:03.320 level, the skills gap is nothing less than a matter of national security, 5.6 million jobs open right

00:33:13.800 now. And Brett, no one talks about them. And we don't talk about them because it's, well, it's

00:33:20.620 unflattering. The existence of all that opportunity in a country like this, it's, it, it doesn't speak,

00:33:27.680 it doesn't speak well of us, but more to the point, it contradicts the prevailing narrative.

00:33:34.500 And the prevailing narrative says, if we bring jobs boundary, we're going to put more people to

00:33:41.600 work. I'm not saying that's not true. It is, it is true, but it's not a panacea. And it's not,

00:33:49.820 it's not an action for which there's an equal or opposite reaction. Our current narrative, in my

00:33:56.380 opinion, basically says that the more opportunity we can create, the more people will go back to

00:34:04.780 work. It's, it's not untrue, but it's not completely true because the existence of this skills gap

00:34:13.780 proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the existence of opportunity alone is not enough

00:34:21.540 to get everybody working. So those two narratives collide. And, and honestly, I've, I've never seen

00:34:33.160 anybody on TV reconcile it in a, in a persuasive way. How do you reconcile, you know, 60, 70 million

00:34:43.700 people out of the workforce who could be working with millions and millions of open jobs that

00:34:51.300 nobody's excited about doing? Whatever your answer is, is probably going to get sucked into some

00:34:57.980 polemic because everything is political today and, and that it's going to get drowned out. So the skills

00:35:04.580 gap continues to exist because we keep lending money we don't have to kids who are never going to be able

00:35:10.780 to pay it back to encourage them to get a four-year degree, which while valuable does not train them

00:35:18.420 to do the jobs that actually exist. And I imagine the skills gap is only going to get bigger as baby

00:35:25.420 boomers start to retire. You know, these guys who own plumbing shops or carpentry shops, there's no one

00:35:31.200 else there to replace them. There's going to be a reckoning. And, you know, much like the parapetia we

00:35:36.900 were talking about before, it's not going to happen overnight. It's not going to be the flick of a

00:35:41.620 switch. Right now you can see it in different states manifesting in different ways. I, I worked for years

00:35:49.540 on a campaign in Alabama called Go Build Alabama, which was motivated primarily by the construction

00:35:56.560 industry down there, who is in a full-on panic, a full-on panic. The average skilled tradesman

00:36:03.900 in Alabama is north of 55. And, you know, these aren't jobs you do into your 80s. These guys are

00:36:12.040 going to retire and there is no one there. There's no one standing by. There's no new generation of

00:36:19.220 trained apprentices waiting to step in. The skills gap in Idaho is different. You know, they've got a,

00:36:27.120 they've got a different situation up there because they actually export a lot of materials all over the

00:36:33.400 world that people really aren't up to speed on. And over the next 15 years, the billions of dollars

00:36:39.740 of opportunity that exists for manufacturing is, is literally sitting right there. And that state

00:36:48.540 has a pretty bad record of kids coming out of college or sorry, out of high school and going into

00:36:57.820 any kind of additional training college or otherwise. So they're looking very specifically

00:37:03.740 at a massive chunk of opportunity that they're going to lose if they don't get some kind of

00:37:10.300 giant training program in place where people can get the skills that are so clearly going to be needed

00:37:18.480 in the next couple of years. It's Georgia has a, has another challenge. Arizona has a different

00:37:24.600 challenge. Iowa has a different challenge. You know, some of these are fundamentally agrarian 1.00

00:37:29.820 challenges. Others are manufacturing it. It's different in different geographies in the country.

00:37:35.980 So that's why it's, it's kind of hard to say anything smart that sums the whole thing up.

00:37:40.560 And I'd be suspicious, honestly, of anyone who, who tries, but in a very general way, the skills gap

00:37:47.340 manifests in, in different ways in different places. But in all cases, the, the first step of

00:37:57.240 the remedy is the same. We have to make a more persuasive case for the opportunities that actually

00:38:04.380 exist and the educational alternatives that will train people for those opportunities. If we don't do

00:38:12.660 that as a society, back to your prior question, you know, what's the real threat on a macro level?

00:38:17.760 If we can't persuade the majority of Americans to be suitably gobsmacked by the miracle of affordable

00:38:29.300 electricity, smooth roads and runways, modern plumbing, all the things that make civilized life

00:38:34.420 possible. If we no longer give a damn about those things, then I don't know how to fix the problem

00:38:40.980 because it has to start with a larger shared collective appreciation, uh, for the society

00:38:48.500 that we have. If we don't have that, then we're just going to have to slip a little bit further

00:38:54.340 down before we hit bottom and somebody slaps us upside the head.

00:38:58.480 So yeah, different geographic locations have different demands for different types of blue

00:39:02.100 collar jobs. So it's hard to say, I mean, I guess, are there professions that overall the

00:39:07.120 country needs more of like welding? Is that, is there a big skills gap there?

00:39:10.720 I'd put it somewhere near the top to tell you the truth. We've, we've had about 600,

00:39:15.440 maybe 800 people come through my little foundation and welding is somewhere near the top of the list

00:39:23.800 of the skill that, that we're most often asked to help.

00:39:29.080 Well, here's a question. Um, you know, one reason I've heard people say, Oh, I'm not going

00:39:34.140 to go into the trades is like, well, it doesn't pay as well as say a white collar job being an

00:39:39.400 attorney or being a business manager. What's the pay like for these blue collar trades?

00:39:46.000 Well, look, the, the actuarial charts, the statistical charts, you know, they are, um,

00:39:53.900 and, and they'll give you an idea of factoring in millions of people in all different areas.

00:40:00.880 And I've, I've seen most of that. And honestly, my, my feeling is so what, how is it? I mean,

00:40:08.600 a writer in Spokane versus a writer in Tallahassee, there's absolutely no reason to assume one is going

00:40:17.380 to be making anything similar to the other. A welder in Dakota right now is going to be making more money

00:40:26.000 than a welder in Oklahoma guaranteed. So, you know, the, the geographical impact on blue collar

00:40:32.520 wages, I do think is real, more real maybe than on white collar. But again, I don't know what to

00:40:41.180 conclude from that actually in a world where you're either willing to relocate or you're not. And, and I

00:40:47.980 think that applies equally to both blue and white collar. I don't know when it happened. This, um,

00:40:53.360 this aversion to mobility. I mean, the country fundamentally formed because people were willing

00:41:03.120 to, to go from one coast to the other, they'd go wherever the opportunity was. They, we were,

00:41:10.900 we were very transient people. We've become really sedentary. You know, I'm amazed personally when I sit

00:41:18.080 out and talk to people who are resistant to exploring a career in the blue collar trades,

00:41:23.360 or in the construction trades, the first thing they'll say is, well, the money's not as good.

00:41:27.920 And I can say, okay, look, if I can show you where the money's better and how the money's better,

00:41:33.740 will you give it a shot? And they'll say, sure. And then I'll, I'll walk them through. I mean,

00:41:38.120 look, I can, I can take the same statistics that show a four-year degree is always better. And,

00:41:44.500 and I can conclude a completely, a completely different conclusion. It's, it's easy to manipulate the

00:41:52.800 numbers, but it never really comes down to that. What it comes down to next is people are like, well,

00:41:57.880 tell me again where I have to go. And, and that's almost always where it falls apart.

00:42:04.420 We're just, we want the job that we've identified that will make us happy. We want that job at the

00:42:13.140 money that we believe is fair. And we want that job in the zip code where we currently live.

00:42:18.840 And, and those three things are primarily what, what I run into most often with people who are

00:42:26.600 resistant to at least looking at the opportunities as they exist today. I'm not sure I answered your

00:42:32.420 question because you did. No, the, the, we had an economist on our podcast, Tyler Cowen,

00:42:38.320 just published a book called The Complacent Class. And he talks about how we become less mobile

00:42:42.600 in our country. People just want to stay put. Yeah, you're right. We used to go travel the country for

00:42:47.820 opportunities. We no longer do that anymore. And he makes these, all these arguments that it's,

00:42:51.560 it's hurting the economy, but it's also causing us to become more segregated. And it's a lot of

00:42:56.680 downstream effects of us becoming less mobile. So if you haven't checked, check that book out,

00:43:00.600 check it out. It's really interesting. What's it called again? The Complacent Class.

00:43:03.620 I'm writing it down right now. It reminds me of a thing. There used to be this thing called the

00:43:08.920 popcorn report. Woman called herself faith popcorn. This is back in the eighties, 0.99

00:43:13.420 but she talked about it in terms of our unwillingness where our, our growing unwillingness

00:43:20.740 to even venture out of our, out of our own homes. And she was looking at the coming technology,

00:43:27.580 uh, and predicting that we'd have something, uh, she called it cocooning where, you know,

00:43:34.200 we would just more and more and more build our homes in a way that allows us to stay in them

00:43:40.860 more and more. And then of course, with delivery services and better technology, better TVs,

00:43:47.260 everything else cocooning turned into something she called burrowing. So, you know, we just kind

00:43:53.520 of doubled down on the whole notion of a cocoon. And so essentially we're, we're here now we're,

00:43:59.140 we're, we're more connected than we've ever been. Thanks to the kind of technology we're using right

00:44:05.560 now and social media, but we're more disconnected than we've ever been as a result and less mobile

00:44:13.460 at the same time. And so, you know, I'm not sure what's next. Where do you go after burrowing?

00:44:20.880 Probably like the, uh, you know, you're going to wind up in an altered States tank, like William Hurt,

00:44:26.300 you know, he's going to be, we're just going to be there suspended in some kind of gooey animation,

00:44:31.460 completely connected and mentally fulfilled, but it's the atrophy that's going to kill us in the end.

00:44:39.520 Besides the blue collar trades, are there other trades where we're seeing a, a skills gap? Cause

00:44:44.780 I can think of one off the top of my head is a tailoring. I've got a, my tailor, he's this 96

00:44:49.700 year old Polish immigrant. He survived the Holocaust. He's here in town. I, and I'd be like,

00:44:54.240 why are you still working? And he says like, there's no one else to do the work. Like I can't retire.

00:44:58.640 He says, yeah, no one wants to go into tailoring or learn a trade. And the thing is, the money's

00:45:02.880 good. Like he's, he's expensive and he can be expensive because he's the only one who can do

00:45:08.000 what he does like really well. Yeah. Look, there's a, there's a tension between what I do,

00:45:14.480 what I want and what I hope for. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm a fan of the guy you just described and I'm

00:45:21.720 a fan of the plumbers and the electricians and the pipe fitters and all the people that I,

00:45:27.480 that I rely on. I want them to do well, but at the same time I'm a consumer. And so, you know,

00:45:35.120 when my toilet explodes, you know, when my, when my engine just falls out of the car,

00:45:40.760 how do I want to pay? Right? So this is where labor and work sort of diverge, you know? Oh,

00:45:48.120 they've, they've come to mean different things. I love the fact that your 96 year old Polish

00:45:53.840 Taylor is still making a great living, but I hate the fact that no one has looked at that industry

00:46:01.240 and said, good grief. Look at all the opportunity here. The answer to your question is sure. The

00:46:06.880 skills gap applies to any vocation that requires a skill that can only be attained through training

00:46:15.640 and apprenticeship. And I can't think of a single vocation that relies on those two things where a

00:46:23.800 gap hasn't manifested. So yeah, you can, you can talk about, uh, cosmetology. You can talk about

00:46:33.160 Taylor. You can talk about all that stuff. The, the only distinction I make, and it's, but it's just a,

00:46:40.120 it's just a fact. Some jobs fundamentally improve, call them the, the wants of our life. You, you want

00:46:49.760 your suit to look good. You, you, you want to be able to, uh, get a haircut in a way that doesn't

00:46:57.080 require you to schedule the thing three months in advance, but you need, you need your toilet to flush

00:47:04.360 when you hit the handle, you need your lights to come on when you flick the switch. You know, we need

00:47:10.340 this technology you and I are using right now to function properly for this interview to occur.

00:47:16.480 So, so there's certain vocations upon which the entire country depends. And there are certain

00:47:26.700 vocations, uh, that we like. So I do draw, I do, I do make a distinction. You know, it's not a,

00:47:36.100 it's not a, it's not a judgment, but I make a distinction between a really great plumber

00:47:40.040 and a really great tailor because life goes on without a really great tailor with plumbing.

00:47:46.480 Not so much. That's true. That is true. Not so much. So tell us a little about the,

00:47:50.380 the foundations you've started to promote blue collar trade work.

00:47:54.300 Well, actually not long after that whole sheep castration thing, it became so clear to me,

00:48:00.500 this was in 2008, you know, and when the economy tanked the obvious narrative and the obvious

00:48:07.060 headlines that we saw day after day after day focused on unemployment numbers. And as the

00:48:13.080 unemployment rate nationally crept up to around 10%, everywhere I went on dirty jobs, I saw

00:48:18.700 help wanted signs, I mean, everywhere, uh, all 50 States. And so it was that awareness that there

00:48:28.000 were two conflicting narratives going on, a widening skills gap contemporaneous with rising unemployment

00:48:35.080 that made me think, you know, if this show has any kind of worthwhile legacy, maybe it should be

00:48:43.740 me talking about the opportunities that exist that no one else talks about. So that's how the foundation

00:48:51.660 started in, in 2008 on labor day. I asked the fans of dirty jobs who happily numbered in the millions

00:49:00.740 to help me build a trade resource center online that, that collated the alternative educational programs,

00:49:12.740 state by state, along with apprenticeships and fellowships and all of the things that weren't a

00:49:18.800 four-year degree that would lead to jobs that actually existed. And the fans of the show were

00:49:26.360 amazing. They, they just overwhelmed us with information and links. So I, I hired people to try and organize

00:49:34.660 that. And then I built a trade resource center and put it online and we called it micro works. It was,

00:49:40.800 it was, it was useful to a point. It wasn't a job board, but really what it was, was just proof

00:49:45.940 positive that opportunity was everywhere. And that was a useful message. I think for people to hear in

00:49:51.640 2009, I think it's useful to hear now, but the trade resource center became very difficult to manage

00:49:58.940 because it was so enormous and I'm not an it guy and I didn't want to spend so much time, you know,

00:50:04.980 organizing things through some sort of, you know, modern age Dewey decimal system. It just,

00:50:10.980 it was, it was killing us. And besides the more important element from building the trade resource

00:50:17.600 center was just the idea that I could go out and say, look what the fans of the show did look at the

00:50:24.800 opportunities that exist. And as I started doing that companies started coming and saying, you know,

00:50:30.040 we have a lot of those opportunities right here. How can we help? And so I started partnering with

00:50:34.840 lots and lots of different companies to focus on jobs that existed under their roof. And then,

00:50:40.380 then people wanted to contribute and I didn't, I didn't really have a mechanism for accepting money

00:50:46.160 and I didn't know what to do with it. So I resisted that for a while, but ultimately it seemed

00:50:51.700 like a sensible thing to do to set up a scholarship program. So micro works kind of evolved over the

00:50:58.960 years, but today it's still a PR campaign for jobs that actually exist. But primarily it's a scholarship

00:51:08.560 fund. We call it a work ethic scholarship program. We look for people who are willing to get the

00:51:16.580 necessary training to pursue the kinds of jobs that we're talking about. And that's, that's been

00:51:22.360 pretty rewarding. And it's been, it's been good, you know, not, not huge by foundation standards.

00:51:27.340 We've given away a little more than $4 million since we started, but they're modest stipends,

00:51:33.660 you know, to 2000 here or 5,000 there, you know, people who want to be a tailor, people who want to be a

00:51:38.840 plumber, you know, well, we can help. And so we have, and, um, honestly of all the things dividing the

00:51:47.420 country right now, the thing that worries me the most is, is the divide between a big group of people

00:51:55.520 who seem convinced that the system's totally rigged and there is no hope and a group of people who are

00:52:03.860 convinced otherwise. So I'm in that group. Um, I know for a fact that there's, there's not a single

00:52:13.440 place in the country where somebody isn't hiring within sort of wherever anybody is sitting right

00:52:20.040 now. I know that. And I've seen it again and again. I've seen what can happen if people enthusiastically

00:52:27.380 go after the first few rungs on the ladder and I can prove it. So that's why the foundation evolved.

00:52:36.700 That's why I continue to work on it to this day. And, um, and with luck, uh, you know, we'll continue

00:52:42.860 to move the needle in the future. So besides the, uh, the foundation, you've also started a podcast

00:52:47.440 yourself, the way I heard it, what was the impetus behind that? And what sort of stuff will

00:52:52.920 listeners find on your show? Honestly, that, that thing turned into, that was another unexpected

00:52:58.700 parapetia. You know, I, I, I like, it was a year ago. I was, uh, saying to a friend of mine, you know,

00:53:05.900 Paul Harvey was, uh, you remember Paul Harvey by any chance? Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

00:53:12.640 I think he's from Oklahoma. I'm from Oklahoma. Yeah. I think he might be too. He worked in Chicago

00:53:18.440 mostly, but he had a show called, uh, called the rest of the story. It was, you know, three or five

00:53:25.700 minute mysteries. He'd do them every day. And, um, and I loved them because they were, they were

00:53:32.260 basically biographies and little history lessons, but served up as a mystery. So you don't really know

00:53:37.800 who he's talking about until the last sentence. It just occurred to me that nobody was doing anything

00:53:42.820 like that. And by the way, Paul Harvey, Charles Kuralt, George Plimpton, Studs Terkel, you know,

00:53:50.160 these guys are all dead and, and they left a huge smoking. They just don't make them. And, and, and,

00:53:56.500 and people don't tell stories like that anymore. And I would in no way, you know, compare myself to

00:54:01.920 them. I can't fill their footsteps, but I can, I can follow in their footsteps maybe. And so with that

00:54:08.100 in mind, given the amount of time I was spending on airplanes, I just thought, you know, I'm going to,

00:54:12.560 I'm going to try and write one of these mysteries a week in the style of Paul Harvey. Anyway, we

00:54:19.320 started doing it a year ago and I started posting them on, under this podcast called the way I heard

00:54:23.880 it. I didn't pay much attention to it because I don't really understand the whole podcast thing.

00:54:29.740 And I was really writing them just to entertain myself. But somebody called a few months ago and

00:54:35.920 said, listen, these things have been downloaded 22 million times. And, you know, I was reading them on

00:54:41.560 Facebook as well and they were viewed something like 30 million times. So he said, yeah, you should

00:54:46.740 maybe do some more. So I'm, I'm doing that. And, and it, and it's really fun. You know, I'm,

00:54:51.960 I'm not a writer by trade, but I love to write. These have been rewarding and the feedback's been

00:54:56.320 great. So as soon as we're finished today, I'm going to go upstairs and I'm going to write one and

00:54:59.600 we'll post it and we'll see where it goes. But so far, so good.

00:55:03.900 Fantastic. Well, Mike, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for your time.

00:55:08.120 It's been an absolute pleasure.

00:55:09.320 Anytime. I appreciate what you guys are doing as well. And I, uh, I hope we can do it again.

00:55:13.400 My guest name is Mike Rowe. You know him as the host of Dirty Jobs. You can find out more

00:55:16.640 information about Mike's work, what he's doing with Mike Rowe works at MikeRowe.com and

00:55:21.040 profoundlydisconnected.com. Also check out our show notes at AOM.IS slash Rowe, where you can find

00:55:27.420 links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:55:36.580 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:55:40.640 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoy this

00:55:44.200 show, I've gotten something out of it. I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give

00:55:46.700 us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. Helps us out a lot. As always, thank you for your continued support.

00:55:51.020 And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

00:55:57.420 Bye.

The Art of Manliness - May 30, 2017

#308： The Case for Blue Collar Work With Mike Rowe

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