The economy right now has a lot of what folks call “churn”: people changing jobs or leaving the workforce altogether. Anecdotally, I feel like I hear almost daily about people in my extended social media circles leaving one job for another, or leaving one to start a business. In hard numbers, both April and July 2021 saw “quit” levels in the U.S. workforce near 4 million people, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Trades like drilling and construction have a big opportunity here. These fields, in general, don’t require a ton of training, pay well and have a slew of veteran workers aging out of the workforce. (Of course, this means that, for employers, it’s an employee’s market, but that’s for another column.) You don’t have to go to college to run a drill rig. You can attend training at a facility like the Apprentice and Skill Improvement Program our contributor Dave Bowers works for. You can take a longer, more intensive program like those offered at Ontario’s Fleming College. Or, you can just work your butt off starting as a helper and do it the old-fashioned way — on the job.