Mike Rowe’s been talking, and people have been listening — the DIRTY JOB’s star’s annual trade school scholarship received 10 times more applicants than average.
“We have got $2.5 million dollars burning a hole in our metaphorical pockets,” Rowe said at the beginning of the year.
Well, that money isn’t burning a hole anymore as the scholarship received 10 times more applicants than what the foundation typically receives.
“Believe me, the standards are still there. You still have to jump through all the hoops, but I just can’t believe that, as of today, we have 10 times the applicants that we had this week last year,” he said.
“I’m not doing anything different. But somebody has flipped a switch in our culture, and the headlines are starting to catch up with what I’ve been saying,” said Rowe.
That’s because America’s about to face a trade crisis, as 2.1 million trade jobs are projected to be unfulfilled by 2030.
Rowe’s been saying for over a decade that America needs more people in trade.
“Those things don’t get debunked overnight. It takes a long time. And, of course, work ethic, that’s a very tricky thing to talk about because it’s been a dog whistle for the last four years, and now it’s not,” he said.
“[There is] also a real genuine kind of head nodding,” he added. “It’s begun to occupy sort of an equal and opposite place as to where CRT had us for so long. And so to see my S.W.E.A.T. pledge turned into a curriculum and to see that curriculum now in 60 schools, I can’t imagine that could have happened five years ago,” he said.
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Rowe recently attended the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland to speak about the importance of trade jobs.
“The reason I went was because the foundation itself is really beginning to tip. The headlines of the day have so caught up to the message that I’ve been out there with for the last 16 years. I just really feel for the first time I can’t afford to not fish where the fish are,” he said.
“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 said in a recent episode of THOUGHT LEADERS.
Rowe’s scholarship exists to prevent that “feedback loop.” It’s helped a lot of hard-working people get involved in trades. One of his favorite recipients is Johnny Goodson.
“He was the drummer in a rock ‘n’ roll band, and he really loved his life. But he wasn’t making any money. He’d fallen in love, and he wanted to raise a family,” Rowe explained.
“So he fills out this application and sends it to me. He was always good with his hands, so he wanted to work on heavy equipment,” Rowe said.
After seven years, Goodson is now a level four tech responsible for inspecting John Deere’s construction work. He’s married, with his second kid on the way.
“He’s as high as you can go. He’s an absolute rock star, only this time a different kind of rock star,” Rowe said. “This is a 37-year-old man who reinvented his life and is now prospering as the result of learning a trade.”
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