Trade school enrollment only jumped because Gen Z got old enough to attend. Apprenticeship programs still can't absorb demand for electricians
Nitat Termmee / Getty Images
Gen Z suddenly seems interested in the skilled trades. Maybe this generation is taking up courses because of all the demand for electricians and plumbers. Or maybe college costs too much and the payoff feels far too uncertain. Regardless of the reason, trade school enrollment among this generation is up 1,421%.
If the data point from higher education research firm Validated Insights doesn't feel real, it's because it's indeed misleading. Eight years ago, almost no one in Gen Z — those born between 1997 and 2012 — was old enough to enroll in anything. The percentage is huge because the starting point was almost zero. A generation aging into eligibility will produce that kind of gain regardless of any broader workforce trend.
Even though more people are searching for trade schools and applying for apprenticeships, most of them aren't converting into students or apprentices. The trades expanding fastest are culinary arts and health care, not the electrical and construction programs powering the data center buildout.
The 1,421% figure is an artifact of demographics, not a measure of any boom. If five Gen Z students somehow enrolled in 2015 and 76 happened to register in 2023, the increase in enrollment would be 1,420% on its own.
Strip out the generational framing and the enrollment picture shrinks. Total trade school enrollment across all age groups grew at a 0.4% compound annual rate from 2017 to 2023. Most of that growth came after the COVID-19 pandemic. Enrollment had been shrinking before it.
Culinary arts led all trade school categories at 9.4% annual growth from 2017 to 2023. Health care was next at 3.9%. Skilled trades — the category that includes electrical and construction programs — grew at just 1.2% annually post-pandemic. Maintenance and repair shrank. The trade-school boom was powered by other fields entirely.
Independent data tells a similar story of recovery. The number of trade certificates earned at U.S. colleges and training programs fell 4% over the decade ending in 2022, from 930,000 to 888,300, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The recent numbers show that decline reversing. Enrollment at trade-focused two-year colleges grew 11.7% in the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center's most recent reporting period and was up almost 20% since spring 2020.
Construction programs saw a 19% enrollment jump from 2021 to 2022. Engineering technician programs grew 8.3% in fall 2024, and mechanics and repair programs gained 10.4%, according to reporting on the Clearinghouse's findings.
Even if more programs are growing than shrinking, none of them have quite recovered what they lost in the previous decade.
One of Validated Insights' more telling findings is the divergence between search interest and actual enrollment. Search traffic for trade schools grew at an 8% compound annual rate from 2017 to 2023, eclipsing the 0.4% gain in enrollment. Interest in attending trade school almost doubled during the pandemic among both teens and adults, but the conversion rate from curiosity to enrollment remained low.
The common narrative is that young people don't want to work with their hands. They do, in growing numbers, but programs can't admit them fast enough. The constraint is capacity rather than motivation.
More than 480,000 apprentices served in the construction industry in 2025, a 28% increase over the past five years, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Applications for commercial electrical apprenticeships also increased more than 70% nationwide between 2022 and 2024, from about 70,000 to 120,000, according to the National Electrical Contractors Association. National data doesn't track how many applicants get turned away.
No trade has attracted more apprentices than electrical work. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers grew its apprenticeship program 44% to more than 52,000 in four years. Electricians outnumber carpenters and plumbers in registered apprenticeships by at least two to one. All that growth still can't close the gap. The economy needs roughly 81,000 new electricians a year through 2034, and the entire training system — union and nonunion — isn't producing anywhere near that.
The strongest case that the pipeline will catch up is generational. Gen Z is choosing trade schools at higher rates than millennials, whose enrollment fell 18.2% over the same period, according to Validated Insights. A Pew Research Center survey from late 2023 found that only one in four U.S. adults considered a four-year degree very or extremely important for landing a well-paying job. Nearly half said it matters less than it did 20 years ago. The cultural ground beneath the four-year degree has shifted, and trade school enrollment is one place that shift shows up.
Whether the pipeline is expanding fast enough to supply electricians for data centers, workers for grid modernization, and replacements for an aging workforce is the question no enrollment statistic can answer.
Join 500,000+ readers who start their day with Quartz.
By subscribing, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
