After 16 years in the trenches of global manufacturing and another 18 years dedicated to aligning education with industry needs, I’ve realized that the labor shortage is actually a structural failure. Whether I’m talking to a production leader or a mid-sized contractor, the pain remains the same: You’re fighting for a workforce that doesn’t exist yet. You can’t find the workers you need. The ones you do find aren’t ready. And the ones who are ready don’t stay.
While GPS Education Partners has spent the last 25 years helping thousands of students find family-sustaining careers in the trades through work-based learning (WBL), we’ve learned something fundamental: The workforce crisis won’t be solved by fighting harder for the same shrinking pool of trained adults. It will be solved by building the pool itself.
THE PIPELINE IS BROKEN
Employers invest in job fairs, sponsor apprenticeships, offer solid wages, and still can’t staff their crews. What they’re missing is the “why.”
The problem isn’t that young people don’t want to work in construction. It’s that most of them have never been shown what a career in construction actually looks like, what a skilled trade career can provide, or how to bridge the gap between a high school classroom and a job site.
By the time a student shows up at a job fair or applies for an apprenticeship, they’ve already decided who they are in the world of work. Those decisions were made years earlier, often by default, because no one showed them the alternative. Employers are fishing at the end of the river. The real work has to happen upstream.
INTERNSHIPS AND APPRENTICESHIPS AREN’T ENOUGH
Apprenticeships and internships are valuable, but they’re not a pipeline strategy on their own. They’re the finish line, not the race.
The employers winning the talent competition right now aren’t the ones offering the highest signing bonuses. They’re the ones who showed up in ninth grade, who opened their job sites for a visit, who mentored a student in an exploration program, who gave a sophomore a reason to think “maybe this is for me.”
One-off activities, a career day, a single plant tour, a scholarship announced at graduation, create moments instead of momentum. Momentum is what the construction trades pipeline needs.
THE PROBLEM IS STRUCTURAL, NOT GENERATIONAL
I hear it constantly: The young people being hired aren’t ready professionally. Work ethic, reliability, communication skills, and the basic understanding of what a job site demands, feel foreign to too many new hires.
That’s not a character flaw. It’s what happens when we build an education system almost entirely separated from the world of work. We tell students for twelve years that the goal is academic achievement and then act surprised when they have no foundation for operating in a professional work environment.
Work-based learning fixes this. Not by replacing academics, but by making them relevant. When a student works alongside a skilled tradesperson, sees technical knowledge applied on an actual project, and learns what it means to show up and be accountable, that’s education at its most powerful. In our book Make School Work, we define this through the 4 As: Authenticity, Aspiration, Ability, and Agency. When all four are present, work-based learning doesn’t just prepare students for a job, it transforms their relationship to work entirely—and with it, their sense of what’s possible.
THE PIPELINE STARTS EARLY
If you’re waiting until a student is a senior to reach them, you’ve already missed much of the window.
A real pipeline starts in middle school—when identities are forming, and one right exposure can change everything. In our experience, the moment that shifts a student’s trajectory happens around eighth or ninth grade—not senior year.
The students who complete apprenticeships, earn journeyman certifications, and stay in the trades for decades aren’t doing it because they stumbled into a job posting. They’re doing it because someone made a career real for them.
GPS Education Partners has built exactly that—structured pathways that start early, build progressively, and produce genuinely career-ready graduates. We’ve partnered with hundreds of businesses, schools, and colleges, impacting over 20,000 students across our home state of Wisconsin and the nation. The model works. The challenge now is scaling it, and that’s an effort that construction employers are positioned to help lead.
WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW
Engage earlier. Reach students before they’ve decided. Conduct site visits, job shadows, mentorship, and part-time work programs. This is the front end of your recruiting strategy. Yes, strategy!
Commit to the continuum. The most effective employer partners we work with don’t just show up at hiring time. They’re part of the full work-based learning journey—awareness, exploration, experience, and preparation. That sustained presence is what turns a curious ninth-grader into a committed apprentice.
Partner with work-based learning intermediaries. You don’t have to build this infrastructure alone. These organizations exist to provide the capacity needed to bridge employers and schools, managing complexity, navigating compliance, and building the relationships that sustain a real pipeline. Structured programs are also designed to integrate 17- and 18-year-olds safely and legally, so liability concerns don’t have to be a barrier. Often, these students become the perfect shadows and support to your most experienced foremen.
The students who will fill your crews in five years are in a classroom right now. The question isn’t whether the talent exists. It’s whether you’re going to reach them in time.
This work is possible. The pipeline won’t build itself, but together, we can. The blueprint for a successful education-to-industry partnership is already drawn. What we need now are leaders willing to break ground. Join us in transforming how we prepare our youth. Let’s build a future where every graduate is truly career-ready.
about the author
Stephanie Reisner is the President and CEO of GPS Education Partners, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit celebrating 25 years of connecting students to meaningful careers through work-based learning. She is a co-author of Make School Work, a practical framework for designing and scaling high-quality work-based learning, available now on Amazon. For more, visit www.gpsed.org and www.makeschoolwork.org.