A growing number of women in New York are leaving office jobs for skilled trades such as plumbing, repair work and locksmithing. Higher pay and lower exposure to replacement by artificial intelligence are cited as reasons behind the shift.
"I'll Learn a Trade Instead of Going to College"
Women are increasingly entering field trades long dominated by men and earning high incomes, the New York Post reported on the 29th.
The paper highlighted the case of Sahar Yona, 27, who runs a residential and commercial locksmith business in Manhattan. Fewer than 12% of locksmiths in the United States are women.
Yona chose to learn a trade and start working in 2017, ahead of her senior year of high school, rather than go to college. She could barely handle a screwdriver at the time, but after separate training she said she was drawn to the locksmith trade.
Locksmiths charge a base service-call fee of $50 to $125, with additional charges for the job itself, travel and late-night calls. Locksmiths in the New York area are estimated to earn about $60,000 to more than $100,000 a year.
The pay comes with a heavy workload. Yona said there are days when she finishes a job at 2 a.m. and is called out again at 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., leaving her with about three hours of sleep.
Told to "Go Home and Do the Dishes," She Became a Six-Figure Plumber
Judaline Cassidy, 56, who has worked as a plumber in New York for more than 30 years, earns more than $120,000 a year. Women account for just 3.1% of plumbers, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Top-earning plumbers in New York bring in more than $149,000 a year. Cassidy said the trades can be a path into the middle class and toward building wealth, because workers can start earning without taking on college debt.
When she started out as a plumber in the 1990s, she also faced sexist treatment. Some colleagues told her to "go home and do the dishes," and she cried in her car. She later became the first woman to join Plumbers Local 371 on Staten Island.
The trend is attributed to the burden of college costs and concerns that AI will replace office work. In a survey of 1,250 Gen Z adults by the job site ResumeTemplates.com, six in 10 said they planned to move into fields such as construction, electrical work, HVAC, plumbing, auto repair and facility maintenance.
Still, some caution against entering the trades solely for the pay. Career coach Lynn Berger said the work requires physical labor, fine motor skills and the ability to handle dangerous situations. "You're not going to make $100,000 right away," she said, advising newcomers to first shadow someone already in the job.
