What the Trades Don't See (But We Do) | Aaron Witt, BuildWitt
About this episode
Aaron Witt discusses the structural issues in the trades industry and the challenges faced by the younger generation entering the workforce.
What the Trades Don't See (But We Do) | Aaron Witt, BuildWitt Aaron Witt of BuildWitt has visited job sites on 5 continents. His take: the trades' biggest problem isn't negative perception — it's invisibility. Most people in the trades blame the younger generation. They say Gen Z is lazy, college-obsessed, or soft. But Aaron Witt — who showed up to his first construction job at 18 with zero background — says the real problem is structural. The industry built its entire training model around workers who grew up in the trades. Now a whole generation is showing up without that baseline knowledge, and the industry is yelling at them for it instead of teaching them. Aaron Witt is the founder of BuildWitt, a media and workforce development company that travels the skilled trades world — from Arctic diamond mines to Saudi Arabia — to tell the stories of the people keeping the world running. He's spent 13 years inside the industry as an outsider, and that vantage point gives him a clear view of what the people inside the fishbowl can't see. This conversation is for employers who keep losing workers within 90 days, for 17-year-olds trying to figure out their path in an AI-disrupted world…
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