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post-secondary pathways. Those who don’t ask these questions
risk ending up with a mountain of debt and no high-paying job to
show for it.
In a perfect world, maybe we wouldn’t ask any of these questions.
Maybe we would just ask, “What do I want to do?” and go from
there. Unfortunately, the college debt situation being what it is right
now in the U.S. makes that possibility seem sadly far fetched.
Still, while it’s important to think about investment and return on
that investment when thinking about a post-secondary education
and career path, it’s just as important to still ask the question
about want. What do you want to do with your career? What do you
want your work days to look like? Where do you want to be in 10
years? Finding a high-paying job is great, but not if it comes at the
expense of your happiness and fulfillment.
Job satisfaction always matters. The cliché saying is that, if you
truly love what you do, “You’ll never work a day in your life.” While
this statement isn’t entirely true—even your dream job will have
hard days—it still carries plenty of wisdom. Finding a job that you
genuinely enjoy will make everything else a little bit easier.
While the skilled trades are sometimes written off as a “second
choice” career for people who couldn’t get into college, the truth is
that the trades carry a superlative job satisfaction rating. Looking
again at the HomeAdvisor 2020 Skilled Trades in America report,
there is a notable statistic about construction trades workers and
their levels of satisfaction in their careers. In total, nearly 81 percent
of construction trades workers surveyed indicated some level of
satisfaction with their work, with most of those (59.41 percent)
classifying themselves as “Very Satisfied.” Only 7.01 percent of
respondents expressed dissatisfaction, while the remaining 12
percent voted “Neutral.”
The workers in this survey who self-identified as having a high level
of satisfaction said they found themselves satisfied in large part
because of the meaning and value of the work they were doing