Who Is Going to Fix It?

Cedar Valley News — March 4, 2026
Who Is Going to Fix It?
By: Lars Olson
From the fictional town of Cedar Valley, where characters from Quiet Echo continue to respond to real-world events.

A woman came into the store last Tuesday looking for a plumber. Not a part. Not advice. A plumber. She had called four in the county. Two did not answer. One was booked three weeks out. The fourth had retired.

I gave her a name. She thanked me like I had done her a personal favor. I had not. I had given her the only plumber I knew still taking new work within thirty miles.

This is happening in every trade. Plumbing. Electrical. HVAC. Welding. Carpentry. The people who build, fix, and maintain the physical world are disappearing, and we spent thirty years helping them leave.

We told a generation of kids one story. Go to college. Get a degree. Sit at a desk. We said it at kitchen tables, in guidance offices, at graduation speeches. We said it so often and so firmly we forgot it was a choice, not a commandment. And while we were saying it, the electricians and pipe fitters and framers were getting older, and nobody was walking into the shop behind them.

The numbers are plain. More than five hundred and fifty thousand construction jobs sit unfilled across the country right now. Ninety-four percent of contractors report difficulty hiring at every skill level. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the annual shortage will grow to close to half a million workers over the next decade. Nearly a third of union electricians are at or near retirement age. The people leaving know things the people coming in have not yet learned — and in some cases, there is nobody coming in at all.

Here is the part nobody expected. Forty-seven percent of skilled tradespeople now earn more than the median college graduate. Read it again. Nearly half the welders, HVAC technicians, heavy equipment operators, and electricians in this country make more money than the average person holding a four-year degree. A licensed elevator mechanic can clear a hundred and forty thousand dollars. A construction manager averages over a hundred thousand. A journeyman plumber or electrician earns north of sixty thousand within a few years of finishing training — and starts working years before the college graduate sends a first resume.

Meanwhile the average college student carries tens of thousands in debt before earning a dollar. The trade school graduate carries little or none.

I am not against college. My daughter went. She is doing fine. But we built a culture where a seventeen-year-old who wanted to wire houses felt like a second choice. We made the boy who was good with his hands feel like he had failed before he started. We sent the message — not in words, but in weight — the desk was better than the bench.

The country is starting to correct. Trade school enrollment jumped sixteen percent between 2022 and 2023. Apprenticeship enrollment has doubled since 2013. The federal government just announced a hundred and forty-five million dollars in new grants for registered apprenticeships in construction, manufacturing, health care, and defense. Forty-seven states passed laws last year expanding career and technical education. The direction is right.

But the hole is deep. You cannot train an electrician in a semester. A plumbing apprenticeship takes four to five years. The gap between the people retiring and the people arriving is measured in decades of accumulated knowledge walking out the door.

To be sure, not every kid belongs in a trade. Some belong in a classroom. Some belong in a lab. The answer was never “everyone should go to trade school” any more than it was “everyone should go to college.” The answer was always the same — figure out what the young person in front of you is built for and help them get there. We just stopped offering half the options.

I sell hardware. I sell screws and pipe fittings and saw blades and wire nuts. Every one of those items is useless without a person who knows how to use it. The shelf does not fix the furnace. The box of fittings does not stop the leak. A human being with trained hands and a steady head does the work. And we are running out of those human beings.

If you have a son or daughter, or a grandchild, staring at the fall and wondering what comes next, do not hand them a single answer. Hand them the full list. Show them the earnings. Show them the demand. Let them hold a wrench and a textbook and decide for themselves which one fits.

Mildred says I talk about this too much. She is probably right. But the next time your furnace goes out in January and nobody answers the phone, you will understand why.

This editorial is part of the fictional Cedar Valley News series, written by Evan Swensen, Publisher, Publication Consultants, and Claude Marshall, AI Developmental Editor. While the people and town are fictional, the national events they reflect on are real.

Want to know the full story behind Cedar Valley? Teresa, Caleb, Dan, and the community you’ve come to know in these editorials first came together in Quiet Echo. Discover how a small town found its way from fear to fellowship — one quiet act of courage at a time. Available on Amazon: https://bit.ly/3ME4nSs

Why do words matter? Because they change lives — when someone reads them. Discover why purpose is the foundation of every sentence worth writing in The Power of Authors by Evan and Lois Swensen. Available on Amazon.

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