Michael Harris, executive director of the Sheet Metal Industry International Training Institute (ITI), the National Energy Management Institute (NEMI) and the Sheet Metal Occupational Health Institute Trust (SMOHIT), joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast for Trades Day to discuss his 40 years in the sheet metal trade — 30 of them on the education and training side — and what the industry is doing to recruit the next generation of skilled workers.
Harris broke down the financial reality for a union sheet metal apprenticeship. An entry-year apprentice can earn about $87,500. It can get to between $125,000 to $200,000 within the four to five years needed to complete the program, all with zero student debt.
Harris also discussed the data center and chip manufacturing construction boom driving demand for sheet metal workers nationwide, the shift in how guidance counselors and parents think about the skilled trades, and the results of National Careers in Trades Week, launched in the spring of 2025 by the SMART Union and their signatory contractors. He also cited a Wakefield Research study, which found that 75 percent of teens between 13 and 18 said they would consider a job in the trades over college.
- A union sheet metal apprenticeship can make an entry-year wage of $87,500. It can reach $125,000 to $200,000 for wages and benefits within four to five years. That includes a pension, full benefits and zero student debt. It’s all based on an earn-while-you-learn model where apprentices are paid for their hours worked on the job throughout their training period. Harris said most people who hear these numbers do not believe them at first. Convincing prospective apprentices and their families that the figures are real occupies significant ITI outreach time.
- The data center and chip manufacturing construction boom has dramatically increased demand for sheet metal workers nationwide, and Harris said the pipeline of planned data centers continues to grow, with 10 to 20 or more new projects announced weekly. Even before data centers dominated the conversation, chip plants, battery plants and car manufacturing facilities were driving similar demand. Harris said the industry has been able to fill those needs to date but must keep its foot on the gas because the workload shows no signs of slowing.
- National Careers in Trades Week, launched in spring 2025 by the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors’ National Association (SMACNA) and SMART, has produced measurable shifts in awareness and is part of a broader decade-long effort to educate guidance counselors, parents and students about the trades. Also, Wakefield Research study found that 75 percent of teens between 13 and 18 say they would consider a career in the trades over careers that require attending college. Harris said attitudes among guidance counselors have begun to shift as the cost of college debt has increased and the trades have become more attractive to families doing honest comparisons.
Forty Years in the Trade, Thirty on the Training Side
Michael Harris came to the sheet metal trade the way many do. His father was a sheet metal worker, and so were his uncles. His brothers also followed. He worked in a sheet metal shop during high school summers and found himself fascinated by what could be built from metal — an art form, as he described it. He tried a year of college, but the trade pulled him back. He has been in it for 40 years, with 30 of them spent on the education and training side. That started as an instructor to director of training for seven different joint training committees, to his current role as executive director of three sheet metal industry institutes.
The Numbers That Nobody Believes
Harris spent part of the conversation breaking down the wages a union sheet metal apprentice can earn, partially in response to figures AWF host Ed “Flash” Ferenc shared from current industry data. The median annual wage in the skilled trades is $58,000, up from $55,000 in the past year alone. Union construction workers earn more than $23,000 in annual wage premiums. Construction is projected to have more than 600,000 job openings annually through 2034. A SMART sheet metal apprentice in their first year earns about $87,500. Within four to five years, when apprenticeship training is completed, wages and benefits of $125,000 to $200,000 are achievable, Harris said. And the apprentices are paid for all hours on jobsites. The training does not charge tuition, so student loans are not necessary. That means no student debt.
Harris said most people who hear those numbers do not believe them. Guidance counselors, he said, are often ready to quit their jobs and sign up on the spot. The challenge is not the numbers themselves. It is convincing people that the numbers are real and that there is no catch. The only catch, he said, is that it requires hard work and commitment. The reward is a career that supports a family, provides a full pension and family benefits, which puts sheet metal workers squarely in the middle or upper middle class.
Data Centers, Chip Plants and Why the Demand Is Not Slowing
The construction boom driving unprecedented demand for skilled sheet metal workers has shifted over the past several years. Battery plants and car manufacturing facilities drove the first wave. Then chip plants. Now, data centers, which Harris said are being announced at a rate of 10 to 20, or more, every week. And each one requires thousands of workers. The pipeline of planned data centers keeps growing, and even if significant pushback slows or stops some of them, Harris said the underlying demand for skilled sheet metal workers would remain strong. Before data centers entered the conversation, there was already more work than the industry could easily fill.
He also addressed the concern some younger workers raise about whether data center construction work will last. Young people who use AI daily tend to accept that the infrastructure being built to support it is not going away. Even for those who are uncertain, the broader construction market — chip manufacturing, healthcare, infrastructure — provides a foundation that does not depend on any single project category.
AI and the Trade That Is Hard to Replace
Harris also addressed the impact that AI is having on the current workforce. The skilled trades are not AI-proof in an absolute sense. He acknowledged that robotics and automation will continue to develop. But the specific work that sheet metal workers do is genuinely difficult to replicate, Harris said. AI cannot install ductwork in a high-rise. A robot has a hard time climbing a ladder on a steel structure and then welding. The physical, spatial, problem-solving character of trade work creates a meaningful buffer against the kind of displacement that desk-based knowledge work faces. Harris said he is grateful to have a background in welding for exactly that reason.
Changing the Minds of Guidance Counselors and Parents
For the past decade, the building trades have made a coordinated effort to change how guidance counselors, school board members and parents think about careers in the building trades. Harris said the effort has produced real movement. Counselors who once reflexively pushed every student toward college are beginning to make more honest comparisons between the cost of a four-year degree and the earn-while-you-learn model the trades offer.
The data support the shift. A Wakefield Research study commissioned by SMACNA found that 75 percent of teens between 13 and 18 — three out of four — say they would consider a trade job over going to college. That figure reflects the cumulative effect of outreach that has reached not just students but the parents and adults who shape their decisions, Harris said. He added that even college completion rates are part of the conversation. The percentage of students who graduate with a degree and actually work in the field their degree prepared them for is, he said, quite small. The trades offer the opposite experience. From day one, apprentices work in the field they are training for and are paid to do it.
National Careers in Trades Week
In spring 2025, National Careers in Trades Week was launched in partnership with SMACNA, which represents 3,500 signatory contracting firms across more than 100 chapters in the United States, Canada, Australia and Brazil, and with SMART. The initiative is focused on awareness: reaching students, families and communities who do not know that careers in the sheet metal industry exist, what they look like and what they pay.
Harris described the trades as the best-kept secret in the building industry. Every training director in every trade, he said, would tell you the same thing. We have tremendous things to offer, and too many people simply do not know we exist. National Careers in Trades Week is the industry's answer to that problem.
The Union Was Thinking About His Retirement Before He Was
Harris closed the conversation on a personal note, reflecting on what the union’s benefits have meant to him as he approaches the end of his career. When he started in the trade, he was not thinking about retirement or healthcare. He was young and, as he put it, bulletproof. His union was thinking about those things on his behalf. Long before he ever did. Now, looking ahead to retirement, he said he is grateful every day that someone was making those provisions while he was too young to care.
That, he said, is what the ITI tries to convey to the next generation. The wages are real, the benefits are real, and the person who chooses this career is choosing a future that someone else built and protected before they were old enough to ask for it, Harris said.
More information on the International Training Institute is available at sheetmetal-iti.org. More information on NEMI is available at nemionline.org. More information on SMOHIT is available at smohit.org.
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