Last month, I had the honor of walking the commencement stage at Yale Law School with my two children, ages 1 and 6 — a huge achievement for someone raised in New York City public housing. Equally important to me, however, was my other graduation, several months earlier, from Lincoln Technical Institute, a vocational school in East Windsor, Conn. While several of my peers at Yale pursued joint JD/MBA degrees, degrees, I decided to wed my Doctor of Law with a diploma in manufacturing technology and machining.
I made that crazy decision in April 2022. The economy was rebounding from the pandemic and, surprisingly, though demand for manufacturing and goods had skyrocketed, millions of well-paid manufacturing and construction jobs remained unfilled. At some point during my studies, I stumbled on a report by the National Association of Manufacturers indicating that U.
S. manufacturing alone — excluding the construction trades — was employing more than 12 million people in jobs with an average annual compensation of $85,000, yet a labor shortage persisted. .
Why was the nation was experiencing such a shortage? I was attending law school in a city with a 26 percent poverty rate and a median household income of $42,000. Throughout the greater New Haven, Conn., area, tens of thousands of skilled jobs remained open, but employers simply could not find enough talent to fill them.
None of these jobs required a college degree, and for workers looking to continue their education, many.
