Welcoming humble jobs as well as fashionable ones

In 1927, a Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce brochure proclaimed that the city “is so completely Scotch-Irish that if it should be transported to the north of Ireland . . . every Orangeman in the region would welcome it as a blood brother.”

This was a convenient fib: While reliable Presbyterians dominated the city’s business community, in truth the city was teeming with grubby working class Catholics — Irish and Italians and Slavs — who manned the mills and outnumbered the respectable Protestants two-to-one. But it was important for Pittsburgh’s commercial image that they be left out of the picture.

For all our chest-thumping about the New Pittsburgh, things haven’t really changed that much. We still seem to suffer from respectability anxiety, even though it’s no longer so much about religion and ethnicity. Instead, it’s about class and the kinds of economic opportunity the city offers.

Case in point: Where was the fanfare over the announcement that a local logistics company, River Materials Inc., is significantly expanding its presence in the old U.S. Steel National Tube Works site in McKeesport? This is a homegrown company that is creating jobs and committing to a struggling community in an old-fashioned way.

We all know why this wasn’t trumpeted as a great economic development success: River Materials deals in physical resources, such as steel and stone and concrete, rather than the bits and bytes of software. And the jobs it creates involve working with one’s hands on something other than a keyboard. In other words, it doesn’t accord with the gleaming, digital-age image of Pittsburgh we try to project to the world.

But these jobs pay real money, too — and more importantly, to people who don’t have the inclination or credentials for the “New Pittsburgh” of coding and robots. A truly prosperous and inclusive economy will provide dignified and well-paying work for people of all types and education levels. And there will always be people who thrive best working with their hands.

This brings to mind the recent news that college enrollments have declined significantly in the past two years. Much of this is due to COVID19, of course: What colleges sell is at least as much the campus experience as a diploma, and so it’s been harder to close the deal.

But there’s also the reality that starting working life with a mortgage-sized debt (and twice the interest rate as a home loan) hasn’t been working out very well for millions of young people. And so we aren’t too worried about teenagers and their parents making other decisions — as long as there’s good work waiting on the other side.

More concerning than the decline in four-year college enrollments, therefore, is the sharper one in twoyear college enrollments. These humbler schools train the young people who keep the physical world going and growing: drivers, builders, mechanics. We would hope that some who choose against a four-year academic education would choose for a two-year practical education.

That’s because a prosperous Pittsburgh needs all types of workers, and all types of jobs — not just the fashionable ones, but the old-fashioned ones, too.