Shifting Perceptions of “Dirty Jobs”

Mike Rowe, best known for Dirty Jobs, joins the podcast to talk about why so many skilled trade careers are still misunderstood. He shares why he thinks perception, not opportunity, is the real barrier and why telling better, more honest stories about these careers matters.

Sean: So, with all the fancy introductions out of the way, welcome to the podcast, Mike Rowe.

Mike Rowe: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Nice to meet you, and thank you for putting on such an extraordinary podcast setting. I think we're in, what, like an adjacent banquet room to a ballroom or something.

Sean: Sure. This is one of our nicer podcast setups.

Mike Rowe: You know what? I did a podcast in a sewer a couple years ago, so this is definitely a step up.

Sean: Yeah, this is a step up.

Mike Rowe: Yeah, I appreciate it.

Sean: You literally just came offstage from PMMI's Executive Leadership Conference. We had a wonderful presentation on your foundation, and you've dedicated years of your time and your life to this foundation to promote the trades. And PMMI, on our end, has spent decades promoting these well-paying careers and these career-oriented jobs, and we still have this workforce crisis, and we still have this skilled labor gap. And I know there's not a magic bullet, but I hate to jump right in with this, but let's jump right in with this—what can we do? What are we missing? What is the magic bullet?

Mike Rowe: Full disclosure, I didn't have a presentation in mind. I almost never do when I do these things, especially and specifically when I know I'm talking to the converted. I'm preaching to the choir—a room full of manufacturing people. I don't think for a moment there's anything I could have said that the people in that room didn't already intuitively know or understand. But what I loved about the conversation I had out there is that the answer to your question is packaging. Every single industry that I know of today that's struggling to recruit and is freaked out by the obstacles and the challenges—they're all grappling with how to package the opportunities that exist within their industry. You guys are no different. It's just that instead of a literal package in this case, we're really talking about a public perception. We're talking about how a company and an industry can present—not just to itself, which is always tempting to do—but to the world what you do and why it matters.

Because if you do that right, then you'll inspire people. People are looking, I think, not just for a reliable way to make a living—they're looking for purpose. They're looking for meaningful work, and that kind of meaning absolutely exists in your industry.

Sean: Yeah, and I can't agree more. There aren't necessarily commercials for manufacturing or commercials for skilled labor—and I'm just using commercials as an example—things on TikTok like there are for going to college or even joining the military. Is it marketing? Is it something like that? Is it as simple as that, that it can be fixed?

Mike Rowe: Nothing is simple about this, but a lot of times the packaging is overlooked or dismissed as one-dimensional or superfluous. It's just a package. Now, you mentioned the military—it's a great example. Think about the different ways that different branches invite you to explore enlistment. The Army basically says, “Hey, join us, be a part of this team. We'll equip you with skills, you'll serve your country, and then when you return to the workforce, you'll be that much better for it.” That's basically that proposition. The Navy's more about, “Look, let's go on an adventure.”

Sean: Yeah, let's see the world.

Mike Rowe: See the world. The Coast Guard does something adjacent to that. The Seabees, of course—“We build, we fight.” And you can go down the list, and they all more or less attempt to make a case for themselves in a way that I would describe as traditionally persuasive—except the Marines.

Sean: All right.

Mike Rowe: The Marines, they're basically saying, “It's probably not for you.” It's the few, the proud. When you think about how you present the opportunity in whatever industry you're in, you have to decide—are we going to assume that we need to sell the listener, or are we just going to challenge them? And you can really see how different companies do that today and to what degree. I wouldn't presume to say what your industry ought to be doing specifically. I just know that on Deadliest Catch, another show that I've worked on for years, the hardest job I've ever done is a greenhorn on a crab boat. And it's the hardest job that's portrayed in that series, which has been on, by the way, for 22 years now.

And at the end of the first season, I was really worried because the greenhorns on that show—they broke fingers, they lost teeth, they lost money, they got beat up, they were hopelessly nauseous. It was miserable for them. And I thought, the captains are going to have a hard time recruiting after the world sees the reality of what it's like to be a greenhorn on a crab boat. The next season in Dutch Harbor, the docks were filled with people standing in line for a shot to be a greenhorn.

Sean: Interesting.

Mike Rowe: So you never really know what's going to appeal to an individual in terms of what they might find persuasive.

Sean: Yeah, and you said an interesting thing, which I've often thought—and I know that a lot of people in that room have thought—is kids aren't exposed. They're in school, and they're exposed to the classics of reading, writing, arithmetic, but shop is gone. Shop class is gone. There's no exposure to this career that could involve tinkering or these high-tech tools or things like that. They've been pushed aside. Could you speak a little bit about that and how that's had such an impact on this generation?

Mike Rowe: Like I said to the crowd, I doubt that you'll be able to find a decision remembered more poorly years from now than the decision to take shop class out of high school. It led to a lot of very specific problems, but it's the unintended consequences that I think are most devastating. You just removed from all view—you took all the optical proof of work out of high school. So a kid couldn't even, in passing, get a look at a fabricating lab or a CNC machine. Even a sconce—just making a simple sconce in wood shop—we just robbed a whole generation of the curiosity of figuring out, on the simplest level, if these careers might be an option. Yeah, we made a terrible mistake when we removed an essential part of our workforce from the public schools, and so we're still dealing with that.

And it's not a straight line, but I can draw a line from that decision to $1.7 trillion in student debt from four-year schools. I can draw a line from that decision to 7.4 million open jobs in manufacturing, skilled trades, and other vocations that don't require a four-year degree. It really created a massive problem. And for that reason, a lot of what we do from a packaging standpoint around these careers right now has become mission-critical, because now it's not just a question of, “Hey, there are a bunch of opportunities out there that kids don't know about.” That's a shame on an individual level and a problem for the companies doing the recruiting. We've left that. Now we're talking about 400,000 electricians that we don't have, and we're not going to get the data centers we need if we can't recruit more plumbers, and we've got national security issues.

So the thing with my foundation—it originally began to make a more persuasive case for individual kids who I knew would benefit hugely from learning a skill that's in demand. Now, I'm still out there with that message, but now it's the Department of War, it's BlackRock, it's NVIDIA—it's the biggest, most consequential companies in the world who are looking at the skills gap and realizing that they have more skin in that game than they might have thought.

Sean: Yeah, and that's—I guess I'm trying to get an answer out of you that I don't know that we have—is how do we make these kids aware that this is an opportunity, this large, this huge... and not even just kids—young adults, adults looking to restart in a different career or something like that. There is this entire gap, this huge area that needs to be filled with welders, electricians, CNC. How do they become aware that not only this exists, but these aren't the jobs that you see from a hundred years ago, where you're in a dirty job—a dark, dangerous, dirty job?

Mike Rowe: Yeah, the first thing I think to realize is that there's no switch to flip.

Sean: Yeah.

Mike Rowe: There's no easy button. It took a long time to effectively disparage an entire part of our workforce. It took, like, a generation of portrayals in sitcoms, and there just—in so many ways—we reinforced and created stigmas and stereotypes and myths and misperceptions around these jobs. I would say one of the easiest things that can be done—and I'm not really sure why more industries don't do it—just take out billboards across the country and show me a picture of the six-figure welder. Give me his name. Give me his actual... I've got 3,500 people who went through my foundation's program. A lot of them are welders. Ninety percent of them are making six figures or better.

Sean: Amazing.

Mike Rowe: So most people, when they hear that, they just don't believe it.

Sean: Yeah.

Mike Rowe: These parents simply don't believe it, and a lot of kids—they don't believe it. So what do you do with that? I make the rounds. I've been interviewed a thousand times on every network. I spend a fair amount of resources telling the stories of the people who have prospered through my program as a result of learning a skill that's in demand. I'm partnering now with some of the biggest companies in the world to make sure those messages reach a bigger audience.

But beyond that, two things work in our favor. One is time. Over time, you're turning around a tanker. You're talking about perceptions. Changing the way people think about education—it's just not going to happen fast. But the thing that is helping, perversely, are the headlines. And Gen Z did get the memo—that $1.7 trillion in debt for a credential that doesn't guarantee you a job—that's starting to take hold. And so the headlines weren't really on my side when I started MikeRoweWORKS.

Sean: Okay, I see what you're saying.

Mike Rowe: I was more of like a jagged little pill going to Congress and telling these stories. And it's not like anybody really disagreed, but they didn't run to high-five either. People aren't quite sure what to do about this because, on the one hand, a lot of parents agree on paper right down the line. But when it comes to their kid—when it comes to their kid—what are they really going to encourage? A vocational path? And so, look, it's a sticky wicket. You've got parents, you've got guidance counselors, you have elected officials, you have a lot of people painting with a really broad brush. From the policy side, if you want to be elected, you have to say things that are true for large numbers of people.

Sean: True.

Mike Rowe: And a lot of what we're talking about here is much more bespoke. It's not a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach. I don't know really if policy can help, but I'm not looking to DC to solve the problem, and I'm not looking to guidance counselors to solve it either. I look primarily to parents and kids specifically. And the only way to reach them is to show them examples of people who look like them, who are prospering as a result of making the kind of vocational decision you're talking about.

Sean: Yeah, and you actually referenced that you've started doing some commercials with some of the students who have gone through your programs to showcase that, right?

Mike Rowe: You have to, yeah. We have 3,500 examples, and I can make sure that a lot of people on social media see them, and I can make sure a lot of people on broadcast see them. It's just money. And not to sound glib about it, but it just goes back to your first question—it's packaging. Never mind how you package the package—how do you package the opportunity?

Sean: Perfect.

Mike Rowe: How does your industry propose to change the way people think about the opportunities therein? No wrong answer, but some approaches are probably more effective than others.

Sean: I love it, and that's perfect, and that puts a great button on the discussion. I want to thank you, Mike, for adding on a little bit more time in your day here to hop on the podcast with us and talk to our audience.

Mike Rowe: I want to thank you guys too. You threw in 10 grand there for the MikeRoweWORKS Foundation. I'll spend it, I promise. And look—spread the word. We've set aside $10 million this year specifically for opportunities in the skilled trades—really any vocation that doesn't require a four-year degree. The money is there at MikeRoweWORKS.org. It's waiting, and everybody listening is invited to check it out.

Sean: I love it. Thank you very much, Mike.

Mike Rowe: Anytime, Sean.