Ricardo Jimenez didn’t really know what he wanted to be. At one point, he thought he’d figure it out in college, like most young adults in America plan to do. He’d enrolled at the University of California, Merced, in August 2020, but just as soon as he started to make sense of the world around him, a pandemic morphed it into something else altogether.
He chose to major in a management, business and economics program to learn the ins and outs of enterprise. Rather than fall to the mercy of a volatile job market, he wanted to own his own business. Be his own boss. But even after he started his second year, he still had no clue what kind of business he wanted to run. The only clear thing was that any student debt would only delay his plans. So he got his commercial driver’s license and took a summer job hauling ice across central California to help pay his way through school.
The job entailed driving tens of thousands of pounds of steel through the Sierra Nevadas, stopping at turnout areas before driving downhill to make sure the heat and friction didn’t kill his brakes. Pulling into tight parking spaces at gas stations, getting cut off by reckless drivers and blocked in by careless shoppers. Carrying thousands of 20-pound bags from pallets in the truck bed into shops, struggling to catch his breath in the thin mountain air while doing so, then neatly stacking them up in freezers. It was always grueling and often thankless — except for the store owners who showed their gratitude for a job well done with complimentary soda and gas station snacks. But every time he hopped back into the driver’s seat, he saw miles of open road and canyons of granite that enveloped him. He looked down on alpine lakes and valleys filled with pine trees. And it felt worth it. Peaceful. Freeing, even. “I love the views. I love driving, listening to music and being able to look at the mountains,” he says. “Not a lot of people could say they have that view when they’re working.”
42 percent of Gen Z adults — those born between 1997 and 2012 — are now pursuing blue-collar jobs.
Jimenez didn’t expect to love trucking. That discovery unlocked a career path he hadn’t seriously considered when he was still in his teens, wondering what his life would look like. But jobs in blue-collar fields like trucking, plumbing and welding are now growing in popularity among young adults trying to find a hold in the job market. A May report by Resume Builder found that 42 percent of Gen Z adults — those born between 1997 and 2012 — are now pursuing blue-collar jobs. For Jimenez, there’s the timeless appeal of work that’s always in demand, that has fewer barriers to entry, that increases his odds of becoming a business owner. Benefits that have become especially attractive at a time when a stable living feels elusive.
Unpredictable tariffs and trade wars have led white-collar businesses to slow hiring across the country, leading to one of the worst job markets in a dozen years. That leaves job seekers in a financial hole, especially since the average bachelor’s degree holder graduates with around $29,000 in federal student loan debt, and less than half of borrowers pay off their debt during the 10-year standard federal loan repayment plan. A new analysis of U.S. labor data found that unemployment rates for men age 22–27 with college degrees are now roughly the same as those without degrees. In tandem, more and more jobs are becoming at least partly automated through technologies like agentic and generative AI. But in a time where entering the management track at a company is suddenly precarious, blue-collar fields like trucking remain necessary — and can be lucrative. “You could make money. You could control your own destiny. Many people go into trade jobs, end up owning their own businesses, and their jobs can’t be taken away by AI,” says Stacie Haller, a nationally recognized career expert and the chief career adviser at Resume Builder. “AI is not going to style your hair or fix the pipes under your sink.”
With the certainty that demand and a specialized skill set bring, jobs across the blue-collar market are attracting young workers, like electricians, plumbers and HVAC technicians. These jobs are estimated to experience anywhere from 6 to 11 percent growth in the coming years, and the blue-collar job sector is estimated to open up hundreds of thousands of jobs.
It didn’t take much college for Jimenez to figure out what he wanted to be. His summer job hauling ice made it clear. He, like anyone thrust into an era of uncertainty, wanted to be secure.
How times, and public perceptions, have changed
Blue-collar work built America from the ground up. In the West, cities developed around physical economies like the cattle trade, ranching, grain farming and mining. Manual labor proved requisite for a functioning society, so jobs in those spaces were well sought after and respected. It was only in the post-industrial 20th century, when technology and machinery displaced jobs in manufacturing, that white-collar work became an American norm.
With automation to consider, jobs that required service-based skills and human interaction were seen as more secure and professional. The thinking was: Manual labor took an unglamorous toll on the human body, and technology was taking those jobs anyway. Instead of mass producing goods, workers could be developing new technologies, conducting research and thinking deeply — things machines couldn’t yet do. That led to the harmful assumption that intelligent people who want a stable living need to pursue higher education and break into white-collar fields like finance or law or tech. “College became the golden ticket to having a good life. Not so much anymore,” Haller says. “It’s not a golden ticket if you have no money for the next 15 years, paying off your college loan.”
Ironically, it’s now technology that’s bringing those same white-collar jobs to the altar of automation. A report conducted by LinkedIn in May found that 63 percent of surveyed executives at the vice president level or higher agreed that artificial intelligence would take on some workplace responsibilities currently given to entry-level employees. Another study by The Harris Poll found 45% of Gen Z job seekers in the United States feel that artificial intelligence has rendered their college education irrelevant in the current job market. Just over 50 percent now view their degree as a waste of money.
Office jobs like data entry, bookkeeping, administration and legal research are most vulnerable. Skilled trades like construction or trucking, though, are among the least threatened careers. “This whole culture was built around white-collar jobs — that if you’re smart, you go to college. Thank God that’s going away because it’s not true,” Haller says. “There’s no job security anymore. Even if you’re getting paid a lot of money in a white-collar job, your company could get sold, or a tariff could kill your business. But there could be more job security if you go into some of these blue-collar jobs, because you get licensed, you’ve got a skill.”
The renewed interest in labor is compounded by the fact that baby boomers in the workforce are gearing up to retire. There’s demand, there’s supply, there’s even access. Vocational schools train students for specific blue-collar careers and are often far less time-consuming and expensive than a college education. The National Student Clearinghouse found that the percentage of students pursuing vocational training has grown about 20 percent in the last five years and has grown consecutively for the last three. Those students gain wealth quicker than their white-collar counterparts, finishing training within a couple of years and diving directly into jobs with competitive pay. The average entry-level salary for a white-collar worker, according to Glassdoor, starts at $48,000 a year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the average wage for nonunion blue-collar workers in fields like construction, maintenance, production and transportation is about $24 an hour, or $49,920 a year. That average jumps up to $68,931 for union workers.
“AI is not going to style your hair or fix the pipes under your sink.”
There’s also the thrill of working with your hands, spending time outside, taking in beautiful views, using your body and your brain in tandem — qualities workers can’t access from behind a desk. “There’s always been the romance of the open road, especially for young people who are blue collar and haven’t traveled much,” says Steve Viscelli, an economic sociologist who studies work, labor markets, automation and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “There is definitely an appeal in getting in a truck and driving around the lower 48 states. That stuff is real for people who get into the industry.”
Jimenez still thinks about his first trucking job hauling ice across California in the dead of summer. His hometown, Patterson, which sits in California’s San Joaquin Valley, is flat and familiar. Those first rolling green foothills and rocky ridges he saw on delivery drives made his world suddenly feel as though it had cracked open — like he was a part of something bigger. He chased that feeling.
In 2022, months after his ice delivery gig, he took a chance and bought his own semitruck. He used it to deliver cargo to the Port of Oakland from the Turlock, Oakdale and Modesto area for a month and a half over his winter break. When his classes resumed and he had to focus on being a full-time student again, he hired a driver. A year later, he purchased another semitruck and hired another driver. By the time he graduated at 22, he owned his own trucking company, Fast Boy Logistics. He now has a fleet of three semitrucks and two drivers, both of whom are 22 years old.
Trucking is the dominant mode of transporting cargo in all of North America, accounting for more than 60 percent of transported goods between the United States, Mexico and Canada. Last year alone, truck drivers moved $1 trillion worth of freight — almost as much money as the entire national deficit. They carry everything from office supplies to hazardous materials. The groceries Americans need to feed their families, the gasoline that gets them to work on time, the medication and pharmaceutical equipment that keep them alive. “It’s not just about driving. It’s about carrying a certain type of respect for other people while we’re on the road, keeping a good name for yourself and for truckers in general,” he says. “Everything revolves around trucking.”
Overcoming stigma
Manual labor comes with its own challenges. Physical demands mean blue-collar workers are more likely to develop injuries or health complications. Labor conditions are, in many cases, lacking or unjust. And the stigma that trade workers are uneducated or otherwise of low status still lingers.
When the No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2002, success in schools shifted to focus squarely on standardized tests. Performance on these exams dictated ratings and funding for schools, so curricula formed around setting up students for high scores and getting them into four-year universities. That came at the expense of extracurricular classes focused on giving students exposure to trades like woodworking and auto shop. The result was the gradual devaluing and lack of awareness of careers in blue-collar professions. A report by Credit Karma last year found that nearly 20 percent of surveyed Americans who attended or are currently attending a four-year college did not have any knowledge of alternative paths to education like vocational schools. That number jumps to more than 30 percent for Gen Z respondents.
Blue-collar grew to be a derogatory term, something used euphemistically with “low class” to offend laborers. Pew Research Center reported in March that 35 percent of blue-collar workers say Americans don’t have much — or any — respect for their work. For generations, that’s affected the workers in those roles and even discouraged young adults from entering trades. “Most truck drivers would say it’s a very low-status occupation currently,” Viscelli, the economic sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, says.
“This whole culture was built around white-collar jobs — that if you’re smart, you go to college. Thank God that’s going away because it’s not true.”
Even Jimenez would agree that stigma still exists. But he and the other Gen Zers entering trades are looking to shake it. “There’s this conception that truckers are all pretty much dirty, and don’t treat things with respect,” he says. “It’s a real career. It’s an actual job.” School districts across the country are now backtracking due to the growing demand for blue-collar work among younger generations, spending tens of millions of dollars to reinstate shop classes for students. The Patterson Professional Truck Driving School at the eponymous high school in central California is one example.
The program is one of the nation’s first high school trucking classes; a yearlong course with 180 hours of instruction on professional trucking to prepare students to take a commercial driver’s license exam upon graduation. Retired truck driver Dave Dein created the program and has taught it for the last eight years. According to him, four of his graduates have gone on to own trucking companies. Jimenez included.
Dein remembers being a high school student with no clue of what his future would look like. He failed classes and got into trouble, then started driving a truck in 1988 as a way of paying his way through college. That’s when he found something he felt passionate about, that came naturally to him. He wanted to make sure other young people didn’t lose that option. “We’re losing about 25 percent of our drivers over the next five to seven years, because they’re aging out and retiring, and we’ve done a horrible job as far as building this pipeline for young, well-trained talent,” he says. Dein’s curriculum has made it into classes at more than 50 high schools across the country that aim to teach students the basics of truck driving. It’s helped students like Jimenez forge their own path and pursue their dream of becoming a financially independent business owner — someone in charge of their own fate even in the face of so much change.
Jimenez is now a regular guest speaker for the Patterson Professional Truck Driving School that’s offered at the high school he graduated from. When he finds himself at the front of Dein’s classroom, looking out at students sitting in desks he sat in himself just a few years prior, it almost feels surreal. He talks to them about going from someone who was once entirely unsure of his future to someone who, however minutely, makes the world go round. And that feels good.
This story appears in the September 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.