America is drowning in a skilled worker crisis that nobody in Washington, D.C. wants to talk about.
Democrats spent decades pushing every kid toward a four-year college degree while the trades died a slow death.
And GM just committed $242 million that exposes Biden's biggest lie about American workers.
GM Bets $242 Million on Workers Biden Left Behind
General Motors is investing more than $242 million over five years into its skilled trades apprenticeship program while the Biden-Harris administration spent four years telling Americans the only path to success runs through a college campus.¹
The program trains 600 new skilled trades workers annually through a combination of 672 hours of classroom instruction and approximately 7,920 hours of hands-on training at GM facilities across the country.²
These aren't the workers Biden cared about during his Presidency.
They're electricians, millwrights, toolmakers, and machine repairers — the people who actually build things in America rather than shuffling papers in some government office.
Michael Trevorrow, GM's senior vice president of global manufacturing, worked his way up from a diemaker apprentice to running all of GM's manufacturing operations worldwide.³
That's the American Dream Democrats forgot existed.
Apprentices get paid while they learn, earn a journeyperson card recognized across the industry, and veterans can complete the program faster using their military training.⁴
Try finding that at a college that'll bury you in $100,000 of student loan debt before handing you a worthless degree in gender studies.
America Faces 2.1 Million Unfilled Jobs While College Enrollment Tanks
The skilled trades crisis isn't some future problem — it's destroying America right now.
Roughly 400,000 skilled trade jobs sit unfilled across the country, and that number will hit nearly 2 million by 2033.⁵
The manufacturing skills gap alone will cost the economy $1 trillion by 2030, with 2.1 million manufacturing jobs going unfilled.⁶
Democrats broke the entire system by convincing every high school kid that manual labor is beneath them.
For every five Baby Boomers retiring from the trades, only two younger workers are replacing them — and that math problem has no solution when Washington, D.C. keeps pushing college over common sense.⁷
More than one in five skilled tradespeople are over 55 and heading for retirement, while 70% of employers report they can't find qualified workers to fill skilled trade roles.⁸
Biden's America is short 500,000 construction workers specifically, and nobody in his administration lifted a finger to fix it.⁹
The real kicker? College enrollment dropped 5% this fall while trade school enrollment surged 4.9% from fall 2020 to 2023, with search traffic for trade schools up 27% in 2024 alone.¹⁰
Young Americans finally figured out that plumbers and electricians make more money than sociology majors.
Georgetown University found that 18.4 million experienced workers with postsecondary education will retire by 2032, but only 13.8 million younger workers will enter to replace them.¹¹
Trump's Working Class Army vs. Biden's College Debt Machine
GM isn't just training workers — they're exposing the fundamental lie of the Biden-Harris economy.
The automaker brings entire groups of students from kindergarten through 12th grade into their plants to show kids what modern manufacturing actually looks like.¹²
Volunteers from GM visit schools to help with engineering projects, teaching quality, standardized processes, and real problem-solving — not the garbage curriculum that government schools peddle.¹³
Biden spent his entire Presidency pandering to college-educated elites while treating blue-collar workers like embarrassing relatives nobody wants to acknowledge.
His student loan forgiveness schemes rewarded the exact people who don't need help while ignoring the skilled workers keeping America's lights on and water running.
The data destroys Biden's narrative completely.
Trade school costs around $33,000 compared to over $100,000 for traditional college, but Biden's Department of Education spent four years making college more expensive and less valuable.¹⁴
One in three Americans now recommend trade school over college for high school graduates, and 83% of adults aged 18-30 say learning a skilled trade provides better economic security than a college degree.¹⁵
These workers can earn $40,000 to $60,000 starting out in auto collision repair, with some trades like HVAC technicians pulling in over $150,000 without any student debt.¹⁶
Meanwhile, college graduates sit around with $35,453 in average student loan debt and bachelor's degrees that qualify them to ask "would you like fries with that?"¹⁷
GM also runs a Technical Learning University training 2,500 current employees per year as technology advances, because the company understands that investing in American workers beats importing cheap labor.¹⁸
President Trump campaigned on putting American workers first, and companies like GM are proving that investing in skilled trades isn't charity — it's how you build a superpower economy.
Biden's legacy is a generation buried in college debt chasing jobs that don't exist.
Trump's vision is an army of skilled workers rebuilding American manufacturing and making this country respected again.
The contrast couldn't be clearer, and GM just bet a quarter billion dollars on which approach actually works.
¹ Daniella Genovese, "Inside GM's $242M push to rebuild America's skilled trades workforce," Fox Business, December 17, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ "Data center demand is booming. Can the supply of trade workers keep up?" CBS News, August 21, 2025.
⁶ "The Skilled Trades Crisis: Why Businesses in the U.S. and Canada Are Struggling to Hire," Remodelers Advantage, March 4, 2025.
⁷ "The Labor Shortage In The United States: Why Are American Workers Becoming Harder to Find?" Skillwork, May 14, 2025.
⁸ "The Skilled Trades Crisis: Why Businesses in the U.S. and Canada Are Struggling to Hire," Remodelers Advantage, March 4, 2025.
⁹ "Skilled Labor Shortage in Construction: How to Close the Gap," American Institute of Constructors, August 6, 2025.
¹⁰ "Trade schools: Why they're grabbing a bigger share of enrollment," University Business, November 18, 2024.
¹¹ "Falling Behind: How Skills Shortages Threaten Future Jobs," Georgetown University, September 2024.
¹² Daniella Genovese, "Inside GM's $242M push to rebuild America's skilled trades workforce," Fox Business, December 17, 2025.
¹³ Ibid.
¹⁴ "98 Trade School vs College Statistics in 2024: Education Cost & Job Outlook Analysis," Financesonline.com, June 25, 2025.
¹⁵ "One in Three Americans Recommend Trade School Over College for High School Grads," American Staffing Association, June 12, 2025.
¹⁶ "As US college enrollment declines, trade programs are booming," Fox News, April 24, 2023.
¹⁷ "98 Trade School vs College Statistics in 2024: Education Cost & Job Outlook Analysis," Financesonline.com, June 25, 2025.
¹⁸ Daniella Genovese, "Inside GM's $242M push to rebuild America's skilled trades workforce," Fox Business, December 17, 2025.
