By Daniyah Yaqoob

Facing high living costs and an uncertain job market after graduation, some Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) students are choosing the skilled trades or pivoting to other service-related jobs over traditional pathways. 

They point to lower training expenses, faster access to full-time work and stable, long-term income as key reasons for the shift, reflecting a broader trend as young people rethink the value of the skilled trades. Labour experts say the change reflects both economic pressures and growing demand for trade workers across Canada.

Kieran McNally-Kennedy, a fourth-year history student at TMU, said once he completes his degree, he is putting his academic career behind him to pursue firefighting instead.

“The cost of living is pretty extreme in Canada at this moment. And to live the lifestyle that I want to live…we’re looking at, realistically, six figures a year by the time I’m 32, 33,” McNally-Kennedy said. 

He said he doesn’t see a realistic path to that salary in history or academia, which pushed him to look beyond his degree. 

For McNally-Kennedy, firefighting, which he had been interested in since high school, crystallized as his plan as he neared graduation. He said the direct service aspect would give him a sense of purpose, while the paycheck for firefighters—which can be between $91,692 to $114,787 a year, according to the Ontario Fire Department—is an added benefit.

He said he plans to complete some certifications and credentials over the course of a year, which will cost him between $7,000 and $12,000, less than the average university degree. It is part of the reason why he thinks there will be an increasing interest in service and skilled trades jobs.

“I think that when people start to struggle and the status quo can no longer be maintained, people start to look elsewhere for survival reasons,” McNally-Kennedy said. “I think right now the push for trades is just because there’s a job market for it.”

A report by Environics Institute, Diversity Institute and Future Skills Centre found that 59 per cent of Canadians are more likely to recommend their children go into a job-oriented trade or apprenticeship, while 26 per cent recommend a general university program. 

The change in perception—where youth entrance into the trades was once “hampered” by stigma around the industry—comes as fewer people are confident about the chances of finding a good, well-paying job with a university degree, the report said. 

It also comes as 700,000 skilled trades workers are expected to retire in Canada by 2028, while the Ontario government said one in six openings are projected in the skilled trades by 2026.

However, Alex Usher, president at Higher Education Strategy Associates, said the shift of preferences is hard to measure and that enrollment numbers don’t indicate that interest in skilled trades is rising.

“If you look nationally, the number of apprentices is rising slightly. But so is the number of university students,” Usher said.

For those who are turning to the trades, the appeal is often a path that focuses less on textbooks and theories and more on handiwork, according to Chau-Anne Nguyen, manager of career education at TMU’s Career, Co-op & Student Success Centre (CC&SS).

“I think that a lot of younger people enjoy working with their hands,” Nguyen said. “Sometimes in university, you don’t have a lot of hands-on work, right? That creativity is missing.”

Keerat Srah, a second-year business management student at TMU, said most of his friends ended up going into the trades after graduating high school. He said it was less about their grade performance and more about looking for career openings. While he’s halfway through his program, his friends are wrapping up college programs or have started earning as apprentices.

According to Srah, one of his friends, an electrician, is one year out of school and working under an experienced professional, making $5,000 to $6,000 a month.

Despite certain university degrees being oversaturated, he believes it doesn’t mean they don’t hold any value anymore.

“There’s big booms for trades, and then there’s big booms for degrees,” he said. “I think trades are going to be in more demand in the next five to 10 years.” 

Nguyen also said that there is an increasing push from universities like TMU to introduce more co-op and internship programs so that students, even in academic fields, can get more hands-on, field experience. Currently, CC&SS’s co-op program offers positions in departments like history, chemical engineering and recently, interior design, among others.

On a policy level, Usher warns that the increasing push from “right-wing governments” to pursue trades comes as a double-edged sword: since the trades are already so gendered, part of it is about bringing more men into high-paying positions and securing their vote. 

It is also about capital investment, scoring deals with private sector unions, who can receive funding to take over the training for skilled jobs and, in turn, place their support behind a political party, Usher said.

Recently, the Ontario government announced it would invest more than $60 million in the skilled trades over the next three years, on top of the $2 billion it says it has invested since 2020.

“Investing in trades is a form of semaphore and saying we love the working class, when the working class voters appear to be up for grabs,” Usher said.

Regardless, it is true that Ontarians are facing an increasing living wage, now to $27.20 in order to make ends meet and that will factor into students’ decisions of where they want to get their foot in the door.

McNally-Kennedy said that the room for upward growth, the slowly eroding stigma and the fact that pursuing the trades can be relatively less expensive than university and possibly more lucrative afterwards, will all be appealing factors for those getting into the trades.

“I think as people start to take trades on more and as the fiscal reality of that starts to come to the front, our society is going to start to see that both [degrees and trades] are just as important as the other,” McNally-Kennedy said.