Table of contents:
Overview
- Topic: Why Gen Z is Choosing the Trades & How to Hire Them
- Problem: The aging HVAC/home service workforce is retiring, creating a talent gap. Simultaneously, Gen Z is questioning the ROI of traditional four-year degrees due to high debt and corporate instability.
- Solution: Positioning the trades as a "high-tech, recession-proof" career path through digitalization (ServiceTitan) and gamification (Plecto).
- Key Drivers for Gen Z:
- Financial Independence: A clear ladder from apprentice to business owner without student debt.
- Meaningful Work: Being an "everyday superhero" by keeping homes safe and comfortable.
- Job Security: Trade roles are AI-proof and in constant demand.
- The Tech Factor: Using mobile apps, IoT, and digital dashboards instead of paper and clipboards.
- Outcome: A new "Toolbelt Generation" that values data-driven self-improvement and competitive, gamified work environments.
Why Gen Z is Choosing the Trades
The Great Jobs Rethink
Since the pandemic, there’s been a lot of talk of rethinking and re-doing work in novel and unconventional ways. Many have realized a four-year college degree simply isn’t a viable avenue to obtain a typical middle-class job anymore. Blooming costs of attending school, and high unemployment rates post-graduation, are the major factors in making young people reconsider the traditional college journey.
Enter the Toolbelt Generation. More popularly known as Generation Z, this cohort of young people born between 1997 and 2012 is redefining what it means to be a worker in the post-pandemic economy.
Why “toolbelt”? Here’s a surprising fact: 18- to 25-year-olds made up nearly 25% of all new skilled trade hires, even though Gen Z comprised just 18% of the overall workforce. There’s a clear trend with young people rejecting a high-debt educational model in favor of a much more cost-effective—and increasingly employable—trades-based path.
There’s a problem emerging on the other end of the generational spectrum too. The current HVAC/home service workforce is aging and needs to pass on their know-how, but has only limited opportunities to do so. This has created a talent gap that urgently needs to be filled.
The solution? Explore The Trades—an initiative founded by the Nexstar Legacy Foundation and supported by ServiceTitan—aims to bridge this gap between older workers and young talent. Through mentorship and school presentations, Explore The Trades works to build the next generation of technicians by getting young people involved in the trades.
Why Gen Z Wants the Trades
Like the Millennials before them, Gen Z wants their work to be meaningful rather than just a time-filler. Unlike Millennials, however, Gen Z is finding that trades professions can provide this sense of workplace fulfillment while guaranteeing a high level of financial security. This is what Explore The Trades calls being an everyday superhero—an ordinary person who does the extraordinary thing of keeping everyone’s homes safe and comfortable.
Through the training ladder of apprentice → master technician → business owner, the trades also provide a clear-cut path for increasing one’s financial independence with each new qualification obtained. Unlike white-collar roles that have proven highly vulnerable to corporate downsizing, the rise of AI, and an incredibly competitive job market, trades roles are essentially recession- and AI-proof.
Trades roles offer both flexibility and security: giving technicians significant independence in their work, while allowing them to provide a service that’s always in demand. This entrepreneurial spirit, plus the inherent economic resilience of these jobs, are extremely appealing in a day and age where long-term white-collar employment is no longer the norm.
The Tech Factor in Trades
Well into the twenty-first century, it’s safe to say today’s trades aren’t the trades your grandpa knew. Modern home service work is highly digitalized, with platforms such as ServiceTitan allowing technicians to make their workflows completely paperless, access mobile apps in the field, and engage in real-time performance tracking.
Having grown up with the internet and IoT, Gen Z understands digitalization on an intuitive level. Engaging with it in a trades-based context provides an avenue for young people to utilize this familiar aspect of their lives in an exciting new way. Digital tracking systems like Plecto, that help technicians monitor their performance and companies scale up their operations, match perfectly with Gen Z’s interest in self-improvement through data engagement.
The Plecto x ServiceTitan Advantage
There’s another exciting component to all of this—gamification. Using game-like activities to boost work performance is fast becoming another avenue to pique interest in the trades. As a data dashboard and gamification platform, Plecto is an ideal tool for encouraging motivation among young employees who have grown up with gamified activities their whole lives.
Integrating Plecto and ServiceTitan allows you complete access to ServiceTitan data, but in a gamified and visualized format. Leaderboards and contests can unleash young employees’ competitive spirit, and instant feedback via notifications and achievement badges help create a culture of teamwide celebration and personal excellence.
Recruiting Gen Z to Your Home Service Firm
Home service companies building ties with Gen Z is essential—after all, they’re the ones who will (literally!) be building our future.
So it’s critical that home service firms with the time and resources begin building bridges with youth now. Here are just a few actionable steps your firm can take to do so:
- Revolutionize your data! Automating your data with a platform like Plecto allows you to save literally hundreds of hours per year, and its gamification features will boost your team motivation and engagement. Taking these steps are beneficial for more than just your workflow—as mentioned above, integrating your work with digital data systems is crucial for attracting and retaining Gen Z.
- Partner with schools. You can request a Classroom Poster Kit from explorethetrades.org to distribute to local high schools or vocational centers. Don’t underestimate the importance of school-based outreach—Explore The Trades has impacted students across 3,000+ school districts, and shop/CTE class is making a rapid comeback across American high schools.
- Focus on culture and values. Work-life balance has become a critical metric in how young people evaluate potential employers. Emphasize that you understand the importance of maintaining a healthy work life and leading with empathy, and how the trades’ inherent flexibility allows technicians to work on their own terms.
- Modernize your recruitment marketing. TikTok is the name of the game here, and Gen Z loves “day in life” videos. It’s this type of content that has proven essential in getting young people interested in the trades. If there’s a media-savvy technician on your team, get them to document a typical workday—perfection isn’t required, but authenticity is!
Building the Future With Trades
Young people from white-collar backgrounds are no longer thinking of the trades solely as a “fallback” career option. Rather, they’re seriously considering the trades in their own right as a first-choice, high-paid, tech-focused career path.
For the home service firm that’s truly vested in raising up the future of trades, several options are at your fingertips. Check out some of Plecto’s other home service blogs below—these resources will give you a general overview of how Plecto can reorganize, revisualize, and automate your data for increased success in today’s digitized trades environment:
- The Scoreboard Effect: How Rack Electric Empowered Technicians to Own Their Performance
- The 7 Best Software for the HVAC Industry
- Boost HVAC Team Performance: 3 Ways Plecto's Dashboards Drive Excellence
- The 6 Biggest Trends in HVAC and Home Service in 2026
Be sure to visit ServiceTitan’s blog for additional insights, and check out Explore The Trades for more information about how you can get high school students interested and involved in home service work.
Despite the challenges of the present, there’s rarely been a better time for young people to enter the trades. Don’t pass this opportunity up—Gen Z is ready for exciting new directions in building the future!
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JAMES NIILER
Content Specialist
An in-house content writer and specialist at Plecto, James brings an academic touch and journalistic flair to his marketing copy. Having worked and studied on both sides of the Atlantic, James is a great believer in the importance of communicating across cultures and industries. Catch his work here on the Plecto blog, or as a guest contributor on other B2B websites.
