The name Charlie Horton means nothing to most of you reading this. But he meant a lot to me, and he was a great friend of the trades, so I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce him to you. Charlie was the founder of industry-leading trade magazines Supply House Times and Plumbing & Mechanical...

The coronavirus pandemic has brought our country – the world in fact – to its knees in a way almost nobody alive has witnessed in our lifetimes. Too many people are getting sick and dying, and our economy is facing its biggest challenges since the Great Depression. Businesses everywhere are shutting...

STEM and the Skilled Trades Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) are the essential building blocks of careers that cross industries and impact our daily lives in different ways. STEM is the foundation of technical careers that propels our future workforce forward to stability, career growth...

April 22 marks the 50th Anniversary of an annual celebration that has come to be known as Earth Day. On April 22, 1970, some 20 million Americans, about 10% of the population at the time, took to demonstrations on college campuses and the streets in hundreds of cities to protest environmental degradation...

Amid the coronavirus shutdown, some states – Illinois and California among them – have deemed construction projects as essential businesses and allowed projects to continue. Others have ordered construction sites closed except for those involving health care and other critical facilities. A survey...

Does what your parents do for a living have an impact on the choice you’ll make for a career? In some cases, the question just doesn’t work. Your parents didn’t have the opportunity to become a social media influencer or a cybersecurity officer When it comes to other types of jobs, though, it turns...

A nationwide shortage of trade workers had led many businesses and politicians to support more trade education and apprenticeship programs. I addressed this in a previous blog. What is meant by apprenticeship? The term is loosely used to describe a variety of on-the-job training (OJT) programs, but true...

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that about four million high school students will be seniors this year. Many have already begun to finalize their plans for what happens after they graduate – and a growing number are deciding the next step may not be a traditional four-year college...

It’s mostly invisible and we don’t think about it until it stops working, so we might not think that there’s much new in the way of plumbing. But today’s plumbers are discovering that technology is transforming the trades. Plumbing is an entire industry onto itself and parts of it are being revolutionized...