Skills Canada has prepared facts to counter the persistent myths about trades:

Myth: Skilled-trade jobs are not stable.

Fact: They are among the most stable of career choices. Given the current and projected demand, many tradespeople have their pick of jobs. Furthermore, their skills are highly transferable in the global economy.

Myth: Skilled trade jobs are dirty and noisy.

Fact: Many trades and technical jobs require working with sophisticated technology in excellent working conditions.

Myth: Skilled-trade jobs are not challenging.

Fact: Tradespeople must be smart and adaptable. It takes as long or longer to acquire a trade as it does to acquire an honours undergraduate degree at university. And apprentices get paid while acquiring their knowledge and work experience.

Myth: Skilled trade jobs are low-paying.

Fact: As mentioned above, most tradespeople’s earnings are well above those of the average Canadian worker. And many tradespeople have the freedom to become self-employed entrepreneurs.

But the myths persist. 

“These jobs are still cursed with a social premise that skilled trades are for people who are not smart, or people who like to get dirty,” says Claire LeSage, a regional events co-ordinator for the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program. “Ever since our students were children, they’ve seen the cartoon plumber with his pants slung too low and been taught that skilled trades were not glamorous jobs. But this is just not true anymore.”

Beselaere cites a broader cultural bias that confers a preferred status on those who attend university. Surveys of students entering Grade 9 show that 70 per cent intend to go on to university. The reality is that only 30 per cent of them do. Technical programs and facilities in high schools across Canada are barely existent, compared to what they were 30 years ago. The walls of high-school guidance offices are plastered with colourful posters enticing students to apply to this or that university, but very few that seek to recruit students to the trades.

Beselaere, LaSage and an army of like-minded people across the country are trying to change that. They are making pupils in elementary schools and students in high schools aware of their full range of career options, with an emphasis on trades and technology. They are making presentations to tens of thousands of students across the country; they are sponsoring the regional, provincial and national competitions that test the skills of aspiring tradespeople; and they are lining up female tradespeople to serve as mentors for young women considering jobs in trades and technical areas.

Article originally published in Volume 5-2 of Your Workplace magazine