SkillsUSA Signing Day Celebrates the Trades by Showcasing the Career Pathways

Modeled after the signing day events for college athletics, this campaign aims to give career and technical education students their proper due.

We’re all familiar with “signing day,” if not by name then by what it looks like on TV: A high-level high school athlete, standing in front of a bank of microphones and cameras in their local gyms, announcing their commitment to play sports for D-I universities.

Most of us at the end of high school are not college athlete material! Many more of us, however, matriculate into unsung but important career paths and professions. These jobs – skilled trade jobs – may not require a four-year degree but still require significant training and upskilling to qualify a worker to fill them. These are jobs that keep our economy moving. And there are a lot of them.

Developing the labor pool so more Americans can meet these jobs is the remit of SkillsUSA, a national organization with a presence in every state, as well as Washington, DC, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It organizes career and technical education (CTE) training for students in academic settings from middle school through postsecondary institutions, and connects new entrants to the workforce with the industries – from healthcare to manufacturing and dozens of fields in between – that are looking to hire them.

It organizes national competitions where CTE students can showcase the development of the skills in their proficiencies. It puts on conferences so students, instructors, industry reps and government officials can network.

And it plans an annual SkillsUSA National Signing Day campaign, during which its chapters across the country “are encouraged to host a Signing Day event and invite business partners, school administrators, teachers, elected officials, SkillsUSA alumni, family and friends to honor students as they sign letters of intent for a job offer, internship/apprenticeship or advancing in CTE/technical training.”

This year the event was planned for May 6 – last week – but, because all of these events are propelled at the chapter level, individual events have been happening since then.

These kids in Georgia are going into the healthcare sciences. Other Georgia teenagers signed up for plumbing, electrical and construction trades. More future trade students signed letters of intent for construction trades in Arizona. High school students in Detroit did the same to skill up for careers in the automotive industry. There were events in Connecticut, Texas, California and Virginia.

Pretty cool! And pretty important. There are quite literally millions of these jobs expected to be available in the coming years. They pay well. And with the right skillset and CTE under your belt, they are attainable.

Learn more about SkillsUSA National Signing Day (and maybe find an event in your area) here.