TIRED OF THE CORPORATE GRIND?
A BLUE- COLLAR JOB MIGHT BE FOR YOU
Christofer Matney spent 20 years climbing the rungs of the fast- paced international business world, rising to chief flight recruiter at Indianapolis’ airport, only to walk away in the prime of his career to become a welder.
Sarah Leyendecker made an equally jarring transition from special- education teacher to butcher.
And Andrew Green, former chief financial officer for a materials testing company with more than 200 employees, now fixes refrigerators and dishwashers as the owner of aMr. Appliance franchise in east Texas.
All say they’re much happier after leaving behind the stress of the corporate world for blue- collar jobs.
“I’m in a much healthier long- term situation now,” says Matney, 48, even though his paycheck was roughly halved. “It was about getting a quality of life.”
White- collar workers are by no means stampeding to blue- collar jobs, but at least a few are upending traditional career ladders by trading in their suits for aprons and factory uniforms. In the first quarter of this year, 2% of all the whitecollar workers who switched jobs went to blue- collar occupations, according to the ADP Research Institute. That’s not much, but it’s up from 1.4% in the first quarter of 2015.
By contrast, about 6% of all blue- collar job switchers landed white- collar positions, ADP says.
Yet many blue- collar fields pay more than the U. S. median of $ 44,000. Median pay is about $ 51,500 for a plumber and $ 46,000 for a heating and air- conditioning installer, Labor Department figures show, and those salaries can increase sharply with overtime pay.
Such occupations also offer seemingly boundless opportunities. An oft- lamented “skills gap” is afflicting industries like manufacturing and construction that can’t find enough skilled workers to fill openings as Baby Boomers retire.
From 2015 to 2025, manufacturers are expected to have 3.5 million job openings, but only 1.5 million workers are projected to stream into the field, says Gardner Carrick, vice president of the Manufacturing Institute, the industry’s training arm.
Mike Bidwell, CEO of Dwyer Group, a service franchise company, says 75% of Mr. Appliance franchisees came from white- collar jobs last year, up from 31% in 2012, a trend he says is “picking up” across the firm’s 17 brands.
Meanwhile, massive layoffs during the Great Recession resulted in fewer whitecollar employees with bigger workloads, leading to more burnout. Fifteen percent of human resource executives at companies with more than 2,500 employees say burnout causes at least 50% of annual turnover, according to a survey last fall by workforce management firm Kronos and Future Workplace, an
HR executive network and research firm.
“People are working longer hours for no additional pay,” says Dan Schawbel, who is a partner in Future Workplace.
Matney “always loved” his flight recruiter job, which involved persuading airlines to bring passenger flights to Indianapolis and local companies to band together to lease space on cargo planes. It was a perennial push to gather data for sales pitches.
But, he adds, the job was “all- consuming.” He put on 80 pounds and learned he had dangerously high blood pressure. “Alightbulb came on,” he says. Two years ago, he saw an ad for a welders’ career fair and enrolled in a three- week course that yielded a job fusing together Toyota forklift parts.
It pays about half his former $ 80,000 salary, but he can leave his job at the factory after each shift and finally enjoy time with his wife and kids, he says.
Lyendecker said her job at a charter school involved lots of administrative work — meeting with often- confrontational parents and monitoring other teachers who resented her oversight.
“It really wore me down,” says the Corrales, N. M., resident.
As a child, she was fascinated with going to the butcher.
So last year she completed an apprenticeship and now volunteers at a meatprocessing plant.
She plans to buy a meat grinder, sausage packer and large refrigerator so she can butcher animals from her house for local farmers before opening her own shop.
Those enterprises ultimately could bring in about $ 50,000 to $ 60,000 a year in income, nearly double her teaching salary, she says.
Green said he’s netting more than the few hundred thousand dollars a year he earned as CFO. Although he enjoyed the job, it overtook his life, working 100hour weeks.
A friend offered to sell him an appliance repair franchise, and Green accompanied one of his technicians for three years to learn appliance repair.
“I feel like I’m providing a service to people that’s very tangible,” he says. “That refrigerator was broken, and I fixed it.”
By contrast, when he was striving to grow company revenue as CFO, he sometimes wondered, “What’s the end goal? When is enough enough?”