In this episode of All Things Work, host Tony Lee speaks with Ken Rusk, owner of Toledo, Ohio-based construction conglomerate Rusk Industries and author of Blue Collar Cash (HarperCollins, 2020), about how employers will need to expand their views of employment eligibility to include applicants without college degrees, especially amid acute labor shortages in most industries.
In this episode of All Things Work, host Tony Lee speaks with Ken Rusk, owner of Toledo, Ohio-based construction conglomerate Rusk Industries and author of Blue Collar Cash (HarperCollins, 2020), about how employers will need to expand their views of employment eligibility to include applicants without college degrees, especially amid acute labor shortages in most industries.
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Speaker 1:
This episode of All Things Work is sponsored by UKG. UKG offers HR and workforce management solutions that support your employees and transform your workplace into a work of art.
Tony Lee:
Welcome to All Things Work a podcast from the Society for Human Resource Management. I'm your host, Tony Lee, Head of Content here at SHRM. Thanks for joining us. All Things Work as an audio adventure, where we talk with thought leaders and taste makers to bring you an insider's perspective on All Things Work. Today we're going to talk about education, specifically, job opportunities for candidates who don't have a college degree. As the unemployment rate continues to fall, millions of workers without college degrees have been left behind. Even while employers scramble to fill jobs. In fact, workers with the least education are most likely to be without a job, thanks to COVID-19. Now the unemployment rate for those with only a high school degree is three times higher than for college graduates. And economists estimate that by 2031, the nation will have 171 million jobs, but only 30% of them will be open to workers who don't have more than a high school degree.
Now that's not to say there won't be opportunities for job hunters without a college degree. Many companies in tech, construction, manufacturing, hospitality, and other sectors are bullish on those prospects and the potential they represent. In fact, a shrinking labor market means all employers will need to reconsider this under tapped source of labor to fill positions in the years ahead, my guest today, joining me to discuss how employers should view candidates, who don't have a college degree is Ken Rusk. Ken is the owner of several Toledo, Ohio construction companies under the umbrella of Rusk industries. And he sees great opportunity in skilled labor jobs for high school graduates. Rusk is author of a book called Blue Collar Cash published by Harper Collins. And he offers online training for managers who work with non-skilled employees. Ken, welcome to All Things Work.
Ken Rusk:
Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
Tony Lee:
Well, it's our pleasure. So let's start with your background. I mean, you're a successful entrepreneur who never went to college. How did that all work out?
Ken Rusk:
Well, it's interesting because when I was 15, my high school was connected by a fence to an industrial park. And after school we would walk through a hole in that fence and go hang out at the carry out like a lot of kids did back then. And I remember walking through these different businesses and one in particular, it had a lot of energy to it. There's a lot of guys milling around. There was dump trucks and tow motors and backhoes and all that kind of things that younger kids liked. And so I went one day I just walked up and said, what do you guys do here? And they said, well, we're basically ditch diggers. I mean, we go and fix old foundations, we dig a lot of ditches and that kind of thing. And I said, well, I can do that.
, I wanted to get my first used car and I wanted to take my girlfriend up for pizza or go bowling with my buddies or whatever. So I did that in the summer times I dug ditches. And then in the winter, when I was in school, I went into the office and kind of learned that side of it. So eventually that led me to opening up satellite offices for the company. So when I was 19, I traveled the country opening up offices and then finally settled in Toledo where we started with six people and 30, some years ago now we're up to 200. So it's been a great ride.
Tony Lee:
Well, that's amazing. And obviously from your own personal experience, you know that hiring employees who don't have a college degree.
Ken Rusk:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, you got to look at it this way in this day and age. And I always say this to people who are in charge of hiring, the old days of, me boss, you employee, those things are over. I mean, I don't see a lot of benefit now to a manager or a boss or owner, whatever HR person saying, well, why should I hire you to work here? I mean, what's happening now is the kids are looking back at us and saying, well, what's in it for me to work for you. And I'm okay with that because a little bit of that selfishness means that hopefully they know what they want. And if you can find someone who knows what they want, can visualize their future, even if you have to help them do that, you're going to have someone that can say to themselves, I can get what I want for myself and for my life with and through your company. And you're going to find yourself a long term loyal, really goal kicking employee that way.
Tony Lee:
Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. So let me ask you this. Why do you think so many companies require a college degree for an entry level job?
Ken Rusk:
I really don't know the answer to that. I thin to them, it means that you stuck it out and you finished something. You went into a four year degree. You got some type of communication skills, or I think to them, it's more of a prerequisite, regardless of what they learned. I mean, if you look at even colleges today, and when I researched for the book, Blue Collar Cash, one of the things that I stumbled across that I couldn't believe was 40% of the kids going into college, don't know why they're going. And then 25% of them, once they figure it out, end up changing their major and only 35% of college graduates ever use the degree in their work for their field of study. So it can be a pretty ineffective and inexpensive system if you don't know exactly why you're going there.
Tony Lee:
So a lot of companies are because of talent shortages starting to reevaluate their job descriptions, before the talent shortage, maybe before the pandemic, every job description that certain companies would just say college degree required. And they never really thought about why. And so we're starting to hear from employers who are saying, it really isn't required. Maybe we'd just take it out. But the question is the people who were doing the hiring, the hiring managers, the people who are making decisions, they went to college. They're thinking about, well, I guess, I should hire people in college. What would you say to them about why that maybe isn't so important?
Ken Rusk:
Well, look at it this way, Tim Cook said from Apple Computer, Tim Cook said that this is a couple years, two, I think, two years back that 50% of their new hires that year did not have a college degree. So if you think about that now that's Apple Computer where you would think everybody needs at least a college degree, if not more to get hired in.
Yeah. I would say this, if you look at the fact that we are overproducing, what I call these bland business degrees where people just go in, they get this degree, they just spend four years hanging out and they don't have a real reason why they did it. Well, now what's happening is you're overproducing those degrees and you're under-producing work experience. The natural knowledge that you would've gained, if you were working at a job, whether it's a blue collar job, a trade or skill. And I think that imbalance is creating this supply and demand problem that we have right now, which is really hurting the economy from an efficiency standpoint.
Tony Lee:
All right. So I have to ask, Georgetown University, which of course has a vested interest in saying why going to college is important. Their research shows that a worker with a college degree is going to earn 90% more pay in their lifetime than one with just a high school degree. Do you think their research is off? Or is there something they're not seeing?
Ken Rusk:
Well, it's something that they're not seeing because what they're doing is they're lumping everybody without a college degree into one big place. And that includes part-timers. That includes people who choose just to work a few days a week. Maybe it includes stay-at-home moms who just want to make a little extra money. It doesn't really include full-time workers, especially skilled trades people, because it would be that number would be nowhere near that. If at all, I mean, now what you're seeing is at least even in our town, small town, like Toledo, you're seeing carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and welders, making more money than lawyers and making more money than some of these white collar jobs that are paying. And again, I need to tell you, I'm not anti- college. I mean, if you're going to operate on my shoulders so I can get back on the golf course, I'm going to want you to have attended every class you could before you pick up that knife, or if you're a teacher or if you're a banker, or if you're an engineer, something like that.
But with the way the supply and demand is happening right now, where supplies low and demand is high. That's where the money goes. And right now that's in blue collar jobs.
Tony Lee:
I mean, you hit it on the head. I can't tell you how many HR professionals I've talked to that said, we've been trying to find welders forever and we can't find trained welders. We can't find electricians. We can't find... And then actually I've heard that extended to first responders. I've heard that extended to sales people who don't necessarily need a college degree, but there is that kind of social stigma and especially parents saying, well, junior, if you want to get ahead, you need to go to college. What would you say to those parents of a child who says, well, I want to be an electrician. I want to be a plumber.
Ken Rusk:
Well, first off, I would say a couple things. Is your goal as a parent. And I just wrote a letter to, an open letter to parents on my website at Kenruss.com about this very subject. If your goal is to have an educated child, then do that. If your goal is to have a happy child, then you need to do more than that. You need to say, what does he or she want their life to look like? How can I guide them in beginning with the end in mind, in other words, how can I guide them to say, what do I want my life to look like? I mean, where do I want to live? What's my hobby going to be? What transportation am I going to use? What's my give back moment? My charity moment? What's my health or hobby moment? If you can get someone to visualize what they want their life to look like, there are many paths to get there.
College only being one of them. So I think parents are definitely the traffic cops between the children as they are in high school and their future. And I think the problem is we're only directing them towards college because it's just this default mechanism that we've stumbled upon. And the pendulum has swung to college only. And believe me I speak from experience and from a lot of friends who are blue collar entrepreneurs who are doing great, nothing could be further from the truth.
Tony Lee:
Yeah, no, I hear you. One other thing I want to ask you about before we shift gears a little bit. So, I've been around a while and I remember shop class and I saw in your book, part of the challenge is shop class has kind of gone the way of all things, having a high school training program and an apprenticeship program where students can explore some of the blue collar professions. Is that the real reason why we're not seeing enough students in those fields?
Ken Rusk:
There's actually a couple, there's probably three good reasons why this is happening. Number one, you nailed it. When they took shop class out of high school, back in the eighties, they eliminated the almost accidental discovery of carpentry, plumbing, mechanics, electronics, all that stuff, home economics, everything. And most of the people that went into their trades back then, they started in shop class, fixing a transmission or, working on a lathe or welding something. And that's how they, that was their path. Well, if you combine the elimination of that with now, kids are spending all their time on computers, and obviously we need to learn computers. I get that.
But why did it have to be a binary choice, meaning one or the other? So now instead of kids building a tree for it in their backyard with hammer and nails and whatever and lumber, they're building things on Minecraft and in their hand, and that's not the same experience. So if you take those two confluences, if you will, and you add them to the fact that colleges are really good at guilting people into saying college or else, you have a pretty strong force, that's creating this supply and demand prime we have today.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. I got to say eighth grade drafting class was a lot of fun. I miss that.
Ken Rusk:
Yeah. I love turning spindles on wood table legs on the lathe. I thought that was really cool.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. There you go. All right. So let's shift gears a little bit. So hourly workers have become like gold, whether it's hospitality or manufacturing. I mean, Amazon, they can't find anywhere near the number of hourly workers they're looking for, but they've also become a little notorious during the pandemic for jumping ship. Sign on bonuses 25% or, increase in pay if you come over here versus over there. So I'm sure you're facing this on a daily basis. What do you do to keep hourly workers on board?
Ken Rusk:
Well, first off, if you're not working on your culture, you're really missing the boat right now, because there is so much competition for people out there right now. If you went from the freeway to my office, you'd pass 20, 25, help wanted signs. So what we've always done, because again, we're in the ditch digging business. It's a tough job. It pays well, but it's a really tough job. So for years, we've had to work on competing against other jobs like landscapers or whatever.
So if you're someone who really wants to build a long, long term loyal sale, or workforce, you really need to work on things like am I really involved in those folks, personal lives, as far as their goals? Do I know exactly what they're chasing? Am I creating an atmosphere of anticipation where you can anticipate all the aspects of your life working for this company? Just like you anticipate a vacation, which we're all good at doing that. What is the atmosphere like? What's the recognition? What is the pay? Like how much control do they think they have over their own lives, over their own financial gain within your company? Those are the things that you really have to be cognizant of right now. Because again, the days of putting it add in the paper and just having a bunch of people in your waiting room, those are just, those are gone.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. But it sounds like what you're saying is it's not just money. Money's gets you in the door. And then what, right?
Ken Rusk:
I've seen a lot of studies that say the reason people stay is because of recognition, of feeling wanted, of feeling valuable, of feeling cared for, and of being in control of their futures. And that those are all ahead of money. So, you really have to take a good, hard look at what your culture looks like right now, because if you're not, they may show up, but they're not going to hang out very long.
Tony Lee:
So what do you say? I mean, I've talked to HR folks at restaurant chains, at hotel chains. Obviously hospitality is in a tough place, but, also manufacturing and warehouse and logistics and truck driving, gosh, where they try and create a great culture. I mean, they do things to make it a place where everyone wants to work, but when they can't compete from a dollar standpoint, they can't keep people. I mean, any thoughts on, I guess it has to be a whole package, right?
Ken Rusk:
Well, it does. And this is where again, this is where supply and demand will always work because as supply shrinks prices rise. And in this case, wages will rise. And unfortunately, this is what you're seeing. You're seeing trucking companies offering 90,000 a year to start. You're, you're seeing steel companies offering 90,000 a year to start. You're seeing a lot of these places. The other day I was on a podcast and they were talking about trickle down economics and how they didn't think it worked. And I said, well, I'm sitting right now in Northern Michigan. And I can see one sign for a fast food restaurant that says $15 an hour, that I can see another sign right down the street that says %16.50 and another one that says $18. So what's happening is those wages are beginning to rise.
Now what's going to happen. Are they going to have to raise their prices? Well, they either have two choices. You can either suck it up into your profits, or you can raise prices. I think people are probably doing both right now. And in the end, that's what can cause some of these inflationary pressures. But I just think that we need to get back to trying to balance the economy. If there's 167 million people considered to be full employment in the United States, about 70 million of those people do something with their hands. So right now we're trying to shove all these kids, all the 170 million of our future kids into college. And we're even talking about the other side. So until our economy gets back in balance and people start, especially parents start to see the opportunities that kids have on the blue collar side, we're going to be in this for a little bit.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. One other area I want to ask you about. So learning to become an electrician, learning to become a ditch digger, I mean, to any skill that you have to develop, you're going to have to learn it from somewhere. And if it's not being taught in high school, then I suppose it's being taught by employers like you. So what role does training have? I mean, how do you determine who to invest in? How do you determine how much to invest? How does that work?
Ken Rusk:
In the old days it was almost like a football team where you had all these people trying out and you hired maybe six of them and then you boiled that down to one. You can't do that in business anymore. Right now, if somebody shows up at my door and they look me in the eye and God forbid, they give me a firm handshake, or maybe even show up a few minutes early, I'm going to coddle those people like a baby bird. And so I'm going to put them under my wing and I'm going to show them every single thing that I can show them. So there has never been a more accelerated period of time, where from the time you start to the time you have probably even your first promotion is a fifth of what it used to be. And that's only because these managers realize that people are hard to find. And so they're treating them like gold and they're really, really making sure that they put everything they've got into them and that's going to create a better quicker, skilled employee for your company.
Tony Lee:
You really have no choice, right? And I got to ask you one of the, so if one of your employees who you've taken under your wing and you've helped comes to you, Ken, and they say, this has been a great place, but gee, there's this other opportunity over here and they're going to pay me 30% more. How do you respond when that happens?
Ken Rusk:
Well, first off, I mean, this again, I have to do what the local market would dictate. Okay? So if I feel like I have to keep that person, I mean, 30 percent's a lot, but we don't typically have that type of situation where we work because we pay pretty well, but you'd have to analyze that on an individual basis. And I would say, I think the best way to look at something like that is, is this a person that is going to stay where they're at? Or are they going to grow within the company? Do they have the ability to become problem solvers and managers and that kind of thing. And then make your decision based on what you think that value is.
Tony Lee:
That sounds like a winning strategy in these crazy days. Well, that is going to do it for today's episode of All Things Work. A big thank you to Ken Rusk for joining me to discuss why companies should reconsider the value of a college degree among job candidates. Before we get out of here, I want to encourage everyone to follow All Things Work wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, listener reviews have a real impact on a podcast visibility so if you enjoy today's episode, please take a moment to leave a review and help others find the show. And finally, you can find all of our episodes on our website at SHRM.org/ATWpodcast. Thanks for listening. And we'll catch you next time on All Things Work.
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