New faces in construction: Local youth find stability in trade careers

Young adults in the Adirondacks are increasingly choosing trades over traditional college paths

By Tim Rowland

As the subprime mortgage crisis unfolded in 2007 and spooked employers put hiring on hold, Kody Churco of Tupper Lake was out of college, out of work and out shooting hoops when a Kentile Excavating pickup rolled to a stop alongside the court.

The driver, Adam Boudreau, was working for his uncle, Bill Kentile, and he needed some help. Churco affirmed he was looking for work and Boudreau told him to be ready in the morning with a packed lunch and a stout pair of boots.

A lot has changed in the trades over the last 17 years, but Churco’s work status isn’t one of them. He’s still working for Kentile, which, building on nearly a half-century family tradition, has become an innovator in Adirondack trades employment, giving young local people superior wages, year-around work and a chance to stay in the community they love. 

“We were always raised and taught to be thankful for work,” said Boudreau, who with his cousin Jason Merrihew bought the company from his uncle in 2015. “If you have work, you’re thankful for that opportunity. You’re thankful for the customers that are willing to pay you for your skill. We try to really convey that, that when you get on a project, on a job, you’re thankful.”

For Churco, 35, it almost didn’t happen. He left his Tupper Lake home to study computers and play football at SUNY Morrisville. He still messes around with tech, but learned quickly that office work wasn’t for him.

“I spent very limited time in big cities and every time I was in a big city, it just kind of spiked my anxiety and I just couldn’t wait to get back home,” he said. “I like the quiet. It’s nice to be able to leave your truck unlocked outside your house all night, not worry about it getting broken into.”

Trading college for shop class

But even as trades were picking up nationally following the Great Recession, Adirondack construction remained in a slump. 

Looking for work, Churco said a lot of his classmates went south as a wave of older contractors retired. So when COVID-19 sent urbanites in search of more secluded housing, there was a dozen years of pent-up demand for housing and no one to build it.

To Mike Martin, owner of a Vermontville construction company, it was cruel irony: suddenly faced with a treasure chest worth of work, there was no one to do it.

“I got so sick of trying to find help,” he said. 

This summer, he traded in the contracting business to become a building trades teacher at the Adirondack Education Center in Saranac Lake.

The “shop class” has also taken a decades-long beating from society in general, which emphasized the higher salaries and more comfortable working conditions associated with a four-year college degree.

But Gen Z in particular has soured on higher education, showing more interest in working with their hands and starting their own businesses.

According to the New America education think tank, on the eve of the pandemic half of those surveyed agreed that well-paying and stable jobs existed in the trades. After the pandemic, that sentiment was held by two-thirds of respondents.

At the same time, the Education Data Initiative reported that the cost of a college degree has doubled in the 21st century, and student-loan debt was seen as canceling out any financial benefit a college degree might offer.

Statistics aside, Shawn McMahon, executive principal of the Franklin-Essex-Hamilton Career and Technical Education programs, said students have noticed a trend: Those who go off to college accumulate debt, while those who turned to trades were accumulating ATVs and brand new trucks. “That’s our best recruiting tool,” McMahon said.

Coming out of the pandemic, students also appeared to be less enamored with sitting still in a classroom. Even so, COVID-19 had presented another problem for the trades. “It’s hard to teach welding in a virtual setting,” McMahon said. So to teach framing skills, teachers were taking 2×4 studs door-to-door.

Even pop culture has leaned into the trades, as the culinary show “The Bear” and Mike Rowe’s “Dirty Jobs” shined a light on manual labor. “It’s cool to be in the trades now,” McMahon said.

In the fall of 2024, the renewed interest in hands-on careers has morphed from a shortage of students wanting to learn the trades to a shortage of educators available to teach them. Necessarily small, trades classrooms are capped and many have waiting lists.

“It’s a refreshing change, I’ve got to say,” said Sherry Snow, student services coordinator for CV-TEC, a division of Champlain Valley Educational Services. “We have waiting lists like we’ve never had before,” she said, during a healthcare jobs fair at Boquet Valley Central School in Elizabethtown.

Educators also said trades workers are more apt to stay and raise families in the greater Adirondack Region than college grads who often have to look for opportunities elsewhere.

“I like being outside, and there are a lot of opportunities here for a fun career,” said Griffin Farr, 16, of Long Lake.

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When he walked into trade school and saw he’d be working with chainsaws and heavy equipment he knew he was in the right place. He plans on going into forestry or becoming a lineman.

And while trade work can be hot, cold, dirty and buggy, it has adopted a degree of sophistication. Two years out of trade school in Saranac Lake, Jackson Carlisto, a part-time arborist, is back in the classroom teaching natural resources.  

He loved his time as a student, restoring Adirondack lean-to’s, building greenhouses and turning vegetable oil into biodiesel. “We expose kids to so much interesting stuff,” he said.

Future rangers and even loggers are taught about park preservation and values of the Adirondack Park Agency and the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Kids study dendrology, they learn how to tell the health of a forest by counting salamanders, they can drop a tree within inches of their mark, they can run a backhoe or a fish hatchery and they can get their own silviculture plot with which to develop a long-range plan.

“One of my seniors wants to be a psychologist,” Carlisto said, and is interested in the emotional well-being a forest can foster.

Technology had further blurred academic lines. Auto body frames are trued with lasers, and big excavators operate with the help of iPads.

From downtime to dig time

At Kentile, Churco said the work can still be dirty and buggy, but his tech background comes in handy. And, unlike past eras in the trades, the work is year-round.

Among the greatest difficulties in the world of Adirondack work is its seasonality. From hospitality to the Olympic Regional Development Authority to trades, recruiters recognize that January-to-December work opportunities is crucial. Employers attempt to keep staff on payroll for four seasons, even if business is slow.

“Some of our best employees would get laid off, and then they wouldn’t come back in the spring because they’d found another job, whether it was logging or something in a similar industry,” Boudreau said. “So the first thing we decided was we’ll keep everyone on, even if it means we’re eating the payroll, because you need those guys in the spring.”

And year-round employees — Kentile employs 15 to 20, all locals, plus five seasonally — maintain more sustainable salaries and are less likely to leave the park with their families in search of better and more consistent pay. What didn’t materialize was the company’s prediction that there would be little work in winter.

”We started taking on plowing accounts just to keep our guys busy to make payroll,” Boudreau said. “What that has morphed into is actually a full excavation schedule, even in the winter, which is kind of a struggle because now we have a full excavation schedule along with plowing. But our guys are busy. Everyone stays on. Everyone’s getting paid. So it was kind of a happy accident.”  

Kentile’s approach might not be typical, at least not yet, but as labor shortages continue, Boudreau believes it will become increasingly important. 

His employees get good pay, good benefits and a truck for their own use. He emphasizes a quality lifestyle and makes sure the spouses of his employees are happy and satisfied their husbands are getting enough time at home.

Boudreau puts out feelers for high school students, and recruits them for summer and eventually full time work. Workers start at up to $20 an hour, and have a reasonable expectation of doubling that. “I think the fastest way to a six-figure job right now is probably through the trades,” Boudreau said.

Second-home construction builds demand

And the trades may be a rare example of work that potentially pays better in the park than elsewhere. As the Adirondacks face a housing shortage, worsened by a lack of buildable lots, it’s tempting to think that new construction is lagging.

While this is true for affordable housing, going on out of sight of average Adirondackers is a post-COVID building spree of magnificent camps. “I would say a lot of the tradesmen are working on very large second homes, either on private lakes or big private tracts of land,” Boudreau said. “You’re working for a lot of Fortune 500 CEOs, or at the very least, wildly successful individuals.”

These successful individuals are able and willing to pay a premium to service their modern day great camps. Solar installers, for example, have found work at remote retreats too far from civilization to tap into the grid.

While there is still more work than there are workers, Boudreau expects this will eventually even out. When that happens, those who want work will need to hone their qualifications beyond basic carpentry or electric circuitry. 

Another way in which trades and higher education are intersecting is the need for “soft skills” that place greater value not on those with a head for figures, but for the ability to dress properly and show up to work on time.

“I’m in their face — loudly — about that all the time,” McMahon said. “I’d get a plane (with a banner) if I could.”

Boudreau said those with a bad attitude or apathetic work ethic tend not to last long at Kentile. And conversely, employers that succeed will be the ones who offer good compensation and a good work atmosphere. 

“I think the trades will always be strong because we have a giant second home market here, and I think it’s an easy career path for someone coming out of school,” Boudreau said. “If they want 40 years worth of work, I think it’ll be here. Stay on top with all the cutting edge technology, and if you do that, you can charge whatever you want to charge. You work on the biggest homes in the park. You’ll become known for that. So I would really encourage men and women to consider the trades and enjoy it.”