I can definitely speak to the skilled trades industry as a whole.
The boomer demographic that built the workforce is often predominantly white and male. Part of the issue with this is that when we see a younger and more diverse demographic moving into the workplace, there's a lot of resiliency that the younger demographic is facing and showing in that braveness in showing up to a place where nobody looks like you.
However, they stay there for only so long. We see that from the retention statistics. Oftentimes companies are holding on to these more senior-level individuals, and these more senior-level individuals are passing that rhetoric down. It's essentially just training generation after generation that you have to endure violence and harassment on a daily basis to pay your dues and to expand and excel in the workplace.
I think that gap of succession is more or less going from zero to 100 very quickly. We're going from a predominantly white and male workforce in the baby boomer generation, which makes up the majority of the skilled trades industry specifically, to a very diverse workforce of youth coming in, and that's caused a lot of issues within.
