With the high price of tuition at four-year colleges and with Americans owing nearly $2 billion in student loans, some young people are questioning the benefits of a traditional bachelor’s degree and choosing to work with their hands.
Vocational school enrollments rose 16% last year, reaching a record high since the National Student Clearinghouse began recording such data. The Gen Z has even been called “the production of the tool belt.”
While most workers in the crafts are men, a growing number of young women are choosing to work with their hands. In 2020, 11.6% of those who completed an apprenticeship program in the US were women, according to the Department of Labor.
“It’s time for people to start realizing that you can make more money, have a better career path, have a happier life, have a better family in the long run by making things with your hands yours,” said Victoria Carl, a 25-year-old. -year-old Albany woman who owns her own auto repair show.
Meet her and three other young women from New York who are working—and thriving—in the trade.
Victoria Carl: ‘I own my own repair shop’
“They told me I couldn’t do it, so I did it,” Carl told The Post about going into auto repair.
At age 21, with a 50% investment from her parents, she took over a shop and named it Carl’s Advanced Automotive and Truck Repair Center in Albany.
Now, at 25, she has four full-time technicians, rolls up her own sleeves, and expects net sales to top $1 million this year.
“I grew up around cars, racing go-karts, restoring trucks with my dad,” she said. “My family knew the previous owners and they always joked that one day I would own the shop, which was funny – until it wasn’t, and it was serious.”
While attending Voorheesville High School, Carl participated in a two-year BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational Services) program, which allowed him to take heavy trucking classes during his junior and senior years of high school. .
At first she encountered resistance.
“My guidance counselor said, ‘Absolutely not, why don’t you go to trade school for nursing or cosmetology or go to college?’ she recalled. “And, honestly, it was scary at first when I was the only woman in the class, but eventually I became more confident.”
She went on to receive an associate degree in agricultural petroleum technology from Northwestern Ohio University.
“As an employer, I now see the value of crafts,” she said. “I’m always hiring. I can’t get people in the door fast enough to do good mechanics.”
Carl also sits on the advisory board of the local automotive college and has seen a change in the way people regard her and her female counterparts.
“These older men are starting to really understand how valuable women are in this profession,” she said. It’s “fantastic”.
Bri Loomis: ‘I Helped Build Bills Stadium’
At just 19 years old, Loomis is already behind the wheel of some massive trucks.
“I don’t really know what drove me. My dad always told me I could do anything I wanted to do,” Loomis, who is based in Chautauqua and drives trucks for upstate New York, told The Post. “And now when I see other women on the street working, we always wave. It’s like our own little community.
By day, she works on drain or removal crews, driving Mack and International trucks. She also jumps and plows state roads in the winter – a critical job in the harsh winters of western New York.
“I could imagine myself working for the state for a very long time,” she said. “I just love what I do.”
Loomis attended a BOCES program in 11th and 12th grade, spending half the school day learning to operate heavy equipment. Like Carl, she initially encountered resistance.
“I remember telling my principal I wanted to do this, and she told me I was too smart for it – that I should go to college or become an engineer. And I said, ‘No, this is what I want to do,'” she said.
The highlight of her short career so far has been helping build the Buffalo Bills stadium. Last summer, she spent eight weeks operating dump trucks, rock trucks and bulldozers on the construction site.
She enjoyed the experience, but ultimately decided to take a job that required her to be away less.
“I’ve seen what it’s like to work 50, 60 hours a week and never be home,” she said. “I don’t have a family yet, but starting a family is one of my biggest dreams in life, so I love that I’ve found something I love that would give me time to have a healthy work-life balance.” – life.
Shauna Irving: “Women are building their cities”
at 33, Irving is the youngest ever president of the women’s club of her electricians’ union, Local Union No. 3, and she’s using her platform to recruit more young women into the field.
“I use every opportunity to encourage girls to be aware of what trade work is and I always tell them that you can achieve almost anything,” Irving told The Post. “You can earn the same amount of money as a man at work, which is not guaranteed in other fields.”
Irving grew up in Brooklyn, where her father was a sheet metal worker.
“He would show me the things he was going to build, and I thought, oh man, this is so cool,” she recalls. “My dad is like a real-life Iron Man.”
She thought she might like to be a teacher or a doctor, but her father suggested she become an electrician – a profession he described as “like prima donnas in the workplace”. (It’s also a lucrative career, with many electricians in NYC making six figures.)
So, in 2011, after high school, Irving enrolled in a RI (Non-Traditional Employment for Women) program in Manhattan, where she underwent training in conjunction with union internship programs.
Soon she was waking up early to be on the job at 6 a.m. while her peers were just getting to sleep after long nights of partying.
“I was fast tracked to be more responsible,” she said.
After the death of several family members and a personal injury derailed her, Irving completed her internship in 2019 and now earns $62 an hour plus benefits.
While Queens residents said some have questioned her skills as an electrician because of her sex, she has also met many helpful people.
“Not everyone thinks we belong there, but there are more brothers who support us a lot,” she said. “I couldn’t have made it in my career without the men who have supported me through it all.”
And, increasingly, she’s not the only woman in the room — or in the workplace.
“I’ve noticed more and more women getting involved,” she said. “They’re starting to see the benefits of coming from different backgrounds to build their cities.”
Emiley Filuta: “This was my dream since I was 5 years old”
Her father and grandfather were both mechanics and she knew from a young age that she wanted to follow in their footsteps.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been outside helping them fix trucks and cars,” Filuta, a 17-year-old from Troy, told The Post. “I always knew this is what I wanted to do.”
As a junior in high school, she enrolled in a two-year automotive technology program at Questar III BOCES.
“It was mostly boys, so it was socially and personally intimidating at first,” she recalls. “But once everyone got comfortable, everyone was really welcoming. I was actually surprised by how involved I felt.”
She took advantage of the BOCES Youth Internship Program and landed a gig working at Rensselaer Honda.
Since last summer, she’s been making $17 an hour — slightly more than the average summer gig in New York — while gaining valuable training.
“I learned about different specializations,” she said. “I do a wide range of things, from smaller things like oil changes and tire rotations to minor engine work, which is my favourite.”
This fall, she plans to attend Hudson Valley Community College for a two-year automotive program — and has no regrets about going the traditional college route.
“Personally I think trade school is wiser for some people. No matter what happens as times change, you’re always going to need trades,” she said. “I love the feeling of being able to look at something and figure out what’s wrong with it. It just feels amazing to know that I can do that.”
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